


We Chose Each Other

by RunWithWolves



Series: 30 Days of Cupcake [30]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Soulmate AU, all 3 seasons, black marker red marker au, this is long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 21:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8343028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunWithWolves/pseuds/RunWithWolves
Summary: Every person is born with two markers full of soul ink to write across their skin: the refillable black to write the names of those you want to give strength to and the permanent red for the name of your soulmate.  Laura has never been very good at conserving her black ink, too busy passing along little pieces of her soul to those who might need it. The only name she's never had an itch to write on her skin? Carmilla Karnstein, the worst roommate in the world. 23,000 words, all 3 seasons, and a soulmate au. this last one is for you, creampuffs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 63 pages and more than 23,000 words in 24 hours. I wanted to give you every season. Something that everyone can agree is complete. I'm am exhausted. I haven't read this myself yet. 
> 
> But still, it's my gift to you. I hope you like it. Thank you for sticking with me over these last 30 days. Longer note is at the bottom as well as the infamous survey where I find out what liked and what you want more of. 
> 
> With all my heart, i hope you enjoy this one. <3

Although her own skin was mostly bare, Laura could not remember a day when her name hadn’t been in written in black across her father’s palms. He placed another box on the bed of her new dorm room and she could see the letters; he always told her that her name fit best on his hands, nestling right in the center over his veins where he could hold her close every time he closed his hands, visible for all to see. 

Even that morning as they’d jammed the car full of everything she’d need for university, he’d still stopped to pull out his marker and carefully write her name over both his palms.

“You give little bits of yourself to the people you love,” he always said. 

Whenever she was sad or scared, Laura had a hundred different memories of him pulling out the soul marker and writing her name across his hands. She’d softly touch the same place on her own body, pretending that she could feel the little bit of his life that he gave to her every day. Just a boost, he said. Just in case. That was always enough to drive back the monsters.

Stretching out the kink her back, her fingers fell to play with her own soul marker where it was jammed in her back pocket. 

She’d used it a handful of times but after the day her dad had found her passed out on her bedroom floor with the uncapped marker clenched in her chubby fingers, he’d asked her to promise to be more careful. 

He’d begged her to be careful with her soul, she only had so much it.

“You’re too brave little Laurosaur,” he’d said, stroking her hair and looking small as he sat in the chair beside her hospital bed, “You can’t give yourself away to everyone who needs it. That scares your old dad too much.”

She’d frowned, still sleepy as her marker slowly re-filled itself with ink. First day in a process that would take months, “But they need it, Daddy. It makes people brave.” She tried to point to his arms, frowning as her own arms hardly seemed to move, “You wrote my names lots of times.”

That was the one day when her name hadn’t only been on his palms. She’d seen it poking up along with his jugular, crisscrossing his wrists, and scrawled hastily over the veins marking his arms. 

“Because you scared me,” he’d said, letting her trace shaky lines across her name as she fought the fatigue.

Laura. Laura. Laura.

“You’re my little girl,” he continued, “and I have to keep you safe.” His gaze turned serious, “You almost died, sweetheart.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out his own black soul marker and left the red one behind. Everyone was born with two, every set unique to their own skin. Their own soul. 

Made of everything they were.

A gift they could choose to keep or share.

Her father’s marker had the word “Sherman” written on the side in his mother’s looping handwriting. Turning it, he showed her the side where a small gauge showed the ink levels. He tapped it and said, “You only have so much ink, Laura.” She tried to say something but he held up his hand, “I know it comes back but that can take a while. If the marker breaks sweetie, it can’t be filled again. If you drop too low, Laurasaur, that means you’ve used up your soul and it would crack your marker. We wouldn’t be able to get you back.”

His gaze flickered to her marker. 

Even as Laura dropped the last box on her dorm room floor, she could remember the curl in her stomach as she’d stared at her father. To this day, he still would not tell her how low her marker had gotten. Her eyes had flown up to his face, wide and scared, “Yours is low Daddy! You’re not going to die too, are you?”

He kissed her gently on the forehead, “I’m not going to die. I promise. But you scared me sweetheart, you almost used up all of your ink so I wanted to make sure that you had some of mine.”

“I almost died?” Laura had said quietly.

“Promise me you’ll be careful,” her dad said, “from now on? With your ink?”

She’d nodded seriously, “I promise.”

He’d sighed, “Thank you sweetheart. Thank you.”

Laura spun around as that same voice called her name.

“That was quite the set of stairs, sweetheart,” her dad said, nudging the boxes on the bed and trying not to seem winded. Laura smiled, laughing as she swept him into a hug. He kissed her on the forehead, “I can’t believe you’ve gotten so big.”

His thumb swept her name on his palm, a common habit.

“Natural progression of time, Dad!” Laura said, “Don’t worry. It doesn’t look like I’m ever going to get too big. Barely out of the children’s section,” she finished with a grumble.

“We should be so thankful,” her father added, “Some of those pieces of fabric that they’re trying to pass off as clothes these days. I mean, hasn’t anyone heard of a shirt? A thing with sleeves that covers skin and doesn’t show any-”

“Dad,” Laura laughed, “Maybe not now?”

“Right. Right.” he said, “Sorry. So boxes?”

They spent the better part of the next few hours unpacking her stuff, once everything had been put in its place and her Dad had given his wary approval to her new roommate, Betty, before she danced out the door, he turned to her with his serious voice.

“Only one last thing,” he said.

She looked around the room, frowning, “I thought we agreed that the entire 26 season set of Doctor Who was too valuable to bring here?”

“Not quite that,” he said, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a glasses case. Laura’s eyebrows shot up as he popped it open but her jaw dropped when he pulled a red marker from the case. Ink completely full.

It was nearly identical to the black one in her own pocket. The only difference was that the ‘Laura’ on the black marker was written in her father’s hand while this red marker bore the word ‘Laura’ in the careful print of her mother. “You’re grown up now,” he said roughly, choking back tears, “I thought it was time to give this back to you.”

She took it carefully, holding it between her fingers like it might break.

“Remember, you only get one shot with that one.” Her dad said.

“I know.” She tucked it carefully away on her bookshelf.

“And be careful with the black one too,” He added, voice cracking.

She gave him a watery smile, “I know Dad.”

He nodded, hand going back to her name on his palm. They stared at each other for a moment before Laura couldn’t take it anymore. She leapt across the room and buried herself in her Dad’s arms as he wrapped her in a hug. There definitely wasn’t any crying. When they’d both faded to sniffles, Laura pulled the collar of his shirt neck back slightly to press a small kiss to the name written in red ink across his heart. 

Her mother’s name staring back her. 

There was power in the red marker. Beyond even the black. The black was for anyone, a temporary name, but the red was something more. Eternal. 

Permanent.

She’d asked her father once if he’d ever regretted picking her mother as his soulmate.

“Never,” he’d said. 

Just underneath the red ink of her mother’s name was the scarred outline of her father’s name. It had been there since the moment that her mother had written his name back. A visualization of the two names tied together. One unit. 

So she kissed the name and then kissed her father’s chin. 

“Be careful,” he told her.

Her laugh was made of tears, “You too Dad. You too.” Then he left, watching her until his car had pulled beyond the gaze of the rearview mirror. 

She lasted two days before pulling out her black marker. With years to think about it, her hand didn’t even pause over her skin. The name “Dad” went on the back of her right knee. The small cavity that was made for hanging over her Dad’s shoulders when she was too short to see. The place where his arm went as he carried her back to bed. Between the straining tendons that kept her moving and running and holding herself together. 

The next day, as the ink faded when the 24 hours passed, she didn’t write it again. Mindful of her father’s request to not waste her ink, especially not on him. Still, the word Dad would show up every few days. Sometimes, a girl just needed her Dad. 

Sometimes her Dad needed her. Who was she not to lend a little strength?

#

She wrote Betty’s name a mere 8 hours after she found out that her roommate was missing. The name went across her shin, sturdy and dependable but nothing too personal. Then, with that taken care of, Laura turned to the phones to try and find anyone in the administration who would care. 

It wasn’t going that well, Laura was tracing out Betty’s name for the third time when the door to the dorm room slammed open. Her head popped up, the trail on the y of Betty’s name going a little long.

A girl appeared in the doorway, all dark hair and leather pants. She gave Laura a nod, “hey”. Then, she tossed her bag onto Betty’s bed like it belonged there. 

“Um,” Laura said, capping her marker and shoving it in her pocket, “Excuse me. But who the hell are you?”

She grinned, “Carmilla. I’m your new roommate, sweetheart.”

Frowning, Laura got to her feet as the marker stabbed her in the hip, “I already have a roommate.”

“Well don’t you catch on quick,” Carmilla drawled.

“No.” Laura corrected, “I mean, I already have a pre-existing roommate. Her name is Betty. She’s missing.” She eyed Carmilla, even in the florescent light of the dorm room, she was clearly gorgeous. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Dark clothes. 

Not a bit of marker on the skin that Laura could see. And she could see a lot of it as Carmilla started rifling through Betty’s things. Laura knocked her hands away, scowling as Carmilla pocketed a 20 from Betty’s purse.

“This Betty,” Carmilla said, “must mean a lot to you.”

“Well, I mean, she’s my roommate,” Laura said, “we hang out.”

Carmilla raised an eyebrow, “You waste your soul ink on all of the girls you hang out with?” She pointed down to Laura’s shin.

“I told you,” Laura said, “she’s missing. Figured she could use it.” Her fingers went to her pocket, fiddling with the marker, “You don’t use your ink?”

Carmilla snorted, “Like I’m going to waste my soul on someone else. Please. I have more than half a brain.” Before Laura could react, Carmilla was in front of her and plucking her marker from her pocket.

“Hey!” Laura shouted, trying to snatch it back, “You can’t just take that!”

“Oh relax,” Carmilla said, “I’m not going to steal it.” She checked the gauge on the side, “At least you have the sense to keep it decently full. I was afraid I might have to hang onto it for safe keeping.”

Laura clenched her fists and stepped closer, no-one other than her parents had ever touched her marker. The simple act taboo. Everyone knew better than that. One of the boys in first grade had pretended to grab it and she’d decked him in the face, fear thrumming through her chest. Her fists clenched as Laura spat the words, “Give it back. Now.”

Looking up, Carmilla’s face changed for just a moment before she rolled her eyes and tossed the marker to Laura who sprang to grab it, clutching it against her chest. “Wow, cupcake, don’t have a heartattack.”

“Get out,” Laura said, voice firm. She glared at Carmilla, nearly shaking as she clutched the marker so tightly that it left indents in her palm.

“Sorry. Can’t,” Carmilla said, sounding not at all sorry as she flopped onto Betty’s bed, “I have a letter from the Dean of Students saying that I live here now.”

She lazily reached into her bag and pulled out a folded paper. As Carmilla closed the bag, Laura caught a glimpse of a shiny tube with a black cap.

Soul marker. 

Then the paper hit her in the face, “Looks like we’re stuck together,” Carmilla said.

It took Laura only a minute to read the paper. Then she balled it up and threw it back in Carmilla’s face, a small moment of triumph when it bounced off her impeccable cheekbone. “Fine.” Laura said, “But I’m finding Betty and as soon as I do. You’re going to be out of here so quick that there are going to be sorchmarks on those leather pants of yours.”

Then she spun around and plopped back in her computer chair. No time like the present to start.

#

Operation Get Rid of Carmilla and Find Betty was not going well. 

She did have a few leads, apparently Betty hadn’t been the only girl who was taken. The only difference was that the other two girls had shown up again. Mostly fine with one exception. 

The ink in their markers was turning gold. Both the black and the red were slowly seeping into a golden colour that almost seemed to glow. The girls refused to use them, only pulling them out to show Laura the swirl of gold within the tubes. That was her only solid lead. 

And she was getting nowhere on it.

Even as she made no progress on finding Betty, the Carmilla situation actually managed to get worse. Carmilla was literally the most awful roommate in the entire existence of roommates. She stole food. She wore Laura’s clothes. She never cleaned anything, somehow making a huge mess despite never leaving her bed before 5pm, so that Laura was left tripping over lacy bras at 7 in the morning when she got up in the dark to try and go to her early Journalism lecture. 

Laura pretty much stopped being considerate after the first week of Carmilla’s presence. There was something annoying about the fact that turning on the lights didn’t even seem to phase Carmilla from her sleep. 

But, while the stealing and the sleeping and the mess were bad, by far the worst was the girls. 

So many girls. 

She tried to distract herself by going on pie dates with Danny but she kept coming back to the room with ties on the door or loud sounds coming from the room, forcing Laura to camp out in the hallway until some girl awkwardly slipped out the door and walked past her. Blondes. Brunettes. Red heads. Tall. Short. Carmilla didn’t seem to have a type. The only similarity, as far as Laura could see, was that every girl walked out of that room with Carmilla’s name written on their finger in black ink.

Dominant hand. Index finger. Outer edge. 

Then came the day when Laura wasn’t paying attention. She stumbled into the room, half asleep after an intense study session at the library and managed to walk in on a half naked Carmilla and some girl who was sitting on her lap. She was giggling as Carmilla kissed her chest, her marker out as she starting writing Carmilla’s name across her finger. 

“That is enough!” Laura shouted. The girl jumped, practically leaping off Carmilla with only a Carmil written on her hand. She grabbed the pillow on Carmilla’s bed, pressing it to her chest. 

It was Laura’s yellow pillow.

Of course it was. 

She was going to need all of the detergent. 

“That is enough!” Laura repeated. She looked at the girl, some blonde, “I am sorry. I’m sure you were having a great time or whatever because that’s the only explanation I can give for the sheer number of girls Carmilla brings to this room. But I am tired and I am sick of sitting out in the hall or hiding in Laf’s room and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” The girl nodded, scrambling for her shirt.

Carmilla just chuckled, “Lighten up, cupcake.”

“I will not lighten up!” She whirled to face her roommate, Carmilla showing no indication of modesty as she leaned back on her elbows, exposing her bra as the flannel she was wearing fell to the sides and gave Laura an eyeful. In an effort not to look at her chest, Laura gaze was stuck traveling the smooth pale skin which was more than enough to stick her tongue to the roof of her mouth. 

Then, as the girl pushed past her and out the door, Laura noticed just a hint of black poking from skin still covered by Carmilla’s flannel. On her left side. High on her ribs and just below her bra. 

It almost looked like ink.

That couldn’t be. 

As if she’d noticed Laura staring, Carmilla sat up and drew the flannel slightly more around her to leave only her stomach and bra bare. She took a deep breath, smirking as it drew Laura’s eyes back to her chest. 

“Enjoying the show?” Carmilla asked.

Laura spun away, “Put a shirt on!”

“But that bunched face you make when you get angry is hilarious buttercup,” Carmilla said, “And I never said you couldn’t look. You chased away my date just as we were getting to the good part. Might as well let one of us get an good show tonight.”

Grabbing her contaminated pillow, Laura chucked it at Carmilla, “You know. I said I was sorry for chasing off that girl but I’m not. I’m really not. Not even a little bit sorry.”

“Well I am,” Carmilla deadpanned. 

“Feel free to stuff it,” Laura said. 

“Oh come on, cupcake,” Carmilla stretched and lazily did up one button on her flannel. Laura clenched her fist, for some annoying reason one button was even hotter. Carmilla continued, “I know you’ve had your nose in a crunch since you started wasting your ink on your missing roommate but even you must know how to have a little fun.”

Laura’s hand clenched into a fist, “It’s not a waste of ink. Are you really so damaged that you’re incapable of caring about anyone else?”

Carmilla did up another two buttons but she met Laura’s gaze for the first time, “And you really think you’re doing anything to help that girl? Are you really doing any good by just giving your literal life away to help poor Betty?”

“At least I’m trying to do something,” Laura said, her fingers going back to the marker in her pocket.

“Awwwwww,” Carmilla’s tone was patronizing, “Are you caring really hard? Because I’m sure if you stay pure of ink and really believe that, it’s totally make a difference.” She clutched a hand to her chest dramatically.

Laura rolled her eyes, “Oh come off it. I’ve seen the way you make every one of your ‘study buddies’ write your name along your finger. Is that the only way you can make yourself not feel miserable and alone like you really are?”

Carmilla’s face went hard and she sat straight up, gripping the edge of the bed so hard that her knuckles turned white. She looked straight at Laura, “And do you really think that you’re doing a lick of actual good? That a couple lines of ink is going to make any difference in the grand scheme of things? If she’s dead, you can’t bring her back with that. If she’s not, then she doesn’t need it. You’re a child and you understand nothing.” 

Abruptly, Carmilla got to her feet and moved right into Laura’s space, “Not about life. Not about this place. And certainly not about markers and what it actually means to survive in a world that will do everything it can to steal your ink. Your soul-” She cut herself off and took a step back, “You know what? The sooner you stop playing Lois Lane and cap your marker for good? The better off you’ll be.”

Laura tightened her lips, trying to keep her face blank as Carmilla walked backwards to the kitchen with a triumphant swagger in her hips. Instead of looking at Carmilla, Laura’s hands went to her palms. To the places where her Dad wrote her name every morning. 

Then they went to her collarbone, tracing the vaguely remembered image of her name on her mother’s skin. 

Betty’s name on her own shin caught her eye. Her Dad’s name on the back of her knee. 

“No.” Laura said.

“What was that?” Carmilla’s words sounded like a dare.

Laura would take her up on it, “No.” she repeated, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe I’m a child. Maybe ink is just some placeholder in our brains that we made up to make us feel better. But I’m not just going to stop writing names.”

She could practically feel Carmilla’s gaze on the back of her head and she slowly pulled her marker from her pocket, an idea forming. 

Don’t waste your ink, her father had said. 

She wouldn’t. Never a waste.

“The world is big and this school is creepy and girls go missing and nobody cares.” she said, hiking up her shirt just enough to get at her hipbone. “

She popped the cap off her marker and continued, writing small strokes over her skin. “Which is wrong. Everyone deserves to know that someone else cares about them, to get that little extra push when they’re down for the count. Even if that’s just knowing that someone cares enough about you to write your name on their skin. Everyone deserves to know that someone cares enough about them to give up a little piece of themself. I deserve to know that someone cares. Betty deserves it.” 

She spun around to face Carmilla, her shirt still lifted to expose her hipbone. Slanting across her skin was the name CARMILLA in big black angry letters. 

Laura finished, “Hell, even you deserve it.”

She wasn’t sure why she’d chosen that spot, her only thought that she wasn’t going to be a nother girl with Carmilla’s name on her finger. Hipbones were places where soft muscles and fat met hard bone. The jutted out when you stretched and disappeared when you slumped but were always solid underneath. 

All of the anger was gone from Carmilla’s face, she was left just staring at Laura. 

Just when the awkward started to set in, Carmilla spoke. Soft and quiet, “You wrote my name?”

“Please,” Laura scoffed, “Don’t act like it’s a new thing. I’ve seen your study buddies, they call come out of here wearing your name. Here you go. Freely given.”

“Yeah but that’s only because they want me to-” Carmilla cut herself off. She shook her head, “whatever. Don’t waste your ink on me, cupcake. I’m hardly worth it.”

Laura lifted her chin, “I decide who I think it worth it and for the next 24 hours, I’ve decided that you are. Congratulations.” Then she spun around, slamming her hands on the keyboard to type her essay.

Even with the shirt dropped to cover it, Carmilla’s name felt like it was practically burning a hole in her skin. 

But the burn wasn’t unpleasant.

#

The name faded like any other when the 24 hour mark passed. 

Days later, Laura still found herself checking to see if it was still there. An itch in her fingers when Carmilla stormed into the room after a chewing out from the Dean and threw a book against the wall, sadness tinging Carmilla’s face behind the anger. 

Don’t waste your ink, her father had said. 

Laura wasn’t sure that this would be a waste. 

#

They were holding a meeting in the room and Laura wasn’t sure if she could believe what Laf was saying. After, they were convinced that Carmilla was a vampire. Which seemed a little much. Sure. There was the whole blood in the milk container incident and the weird sleep patterns and the seemingly supernatural strength but vampire seemed like a bit of a stretch. 

“Guys,” Laura said, “we can’t just accuse her of being a vampire without any facts.”

“I just gave you facts,” Laf said, “Or was the blood thing not enough?”

She’d spent most of her time hiding from Carmilla’s cavalcade of study buddies in Laf’s room. The mad scientist let her crash on the couch in their single room without question. The only catch was that it meant she often found herself in the middle of an experiment or two.

Laf was interested in the soul ink. So Laura found herself being forced to take copious notes as Laf played with their own markers. She’d seen them write Perry’s name a dozen times, always right over their heart in black ink. 

They were the first person Laura had ever met with a shadow.

Permanently sketched across Laf’s heart like faded marker that never went away, Laf had the word Perry. Apparently they’d had it since they were thirteen. Laf had written Perry’s name over their heart for nearly every day of their life but, on that day, it had stuck around when the 24 hour period passed. Just a vague shadow of a P. Over the months, as they kept writing Perry’s name, the P grew into the full name. 

While the markers were a choice, the shadow was not. It didn’t take ink and it didn’t pass power but stayed as a reminder of what could be. It offered a choice to be made. 

The red ink only worked when it was written on top of a shadow. 

If the shadow appeared, it meant that the person’s name on your heart could grow to be a soulmate. A potential soulmate. 

While the red marker was forever, the shadow grew and changed. The shadow could stay forever, giving you every opportunity to choose that person as your soulmate, but the shadow could also disappear. One day there and the next day gone. 

Your chance lost. 

You didn’t have to write over the shadow. It was still your choice to use the red marker. 

Laf hadn’t used theirs yet. They smiled and told her that Perry wasn’t ready for that conversation yet and that they believed that Perry’s shadow would never fade. 

They loved her too much for that. 

They were willing to wait until she was ready. If Laf wrote Perry’s name in red ink, Perry would know. A scar forming of her name on her own chest. 

Laura had never even had a shadow. 

She rubbed her chest absently, “I mean actual proof that she’s a vampire. That could have just been some weird, twisted prank.”

Perry was quick to agree, “For all we know, she’s just a light adverse octogenarian with an intense need for hemoglobin. Let’s not jump right to vampire now.”

“I don’t know,” Danny added, “If she’s a vampire then I think we need to jump on this as soon as possible, we can’t just send Laura back to her room with something that might kill her.”

Laura lifted her hands, trying to calm her, “Look. No-one is jumping anyone until we know for sure.”

“Well we could check her marker,” Laf said and every head turned to them. “What?” They said, “Vampires are dead. Everyone knows that their markers wouldn’t have any ink; they’re all dried up. They still have to keep them though, just like we do. You snap both a vampire’s markers and you kill them.” They looked over at Laura, “Time to get your spy on Hollis.”

#

Apparently Carmilla never left the room without her marker. 

Despite Laura’s best efforts, Carmilla always seemed to be around and the few times that Carmilla was actually in class and Laura had searched for the markers, she hadn’t come up with anything. 

So she suddenly found herself spending all of her time tracking her roommates whereabouts, trying to track down her marker. 

It got to the point where she wasn’t sleeping properly, convinced that Carmilla was getting up in the middle of the night to spend a long time in the bathroom. She just couldn’t figure out the pattern. She’d tried staying up until 3 in the morning and Carmilla had stayed firmly in her own bed the whole time, thick book in her lap. 

There was almost concern in her eyes when she looked over at Laura and said, “Wow. Cupcake, go to bed. You look like crap.”

Laura had to remind herself that vampires didn’t care about tiny humans. 

Yet when she fell asleep with her face in the keyboard as she tried to figure Carmilla out, the next morning she found herself snug in her bed. Frowning, Laura tried to remember when she’d walked over to the bed. 

Must have been more tired than she thought. 

She was writing Betty’s name on her leg for the 38th day in a row when Carmilla rolled out of bed and looked at her with bleary eyes, “Morning.”

“It’s 5 pm,” Laura said. 

She glanced at Laura as she made her way to the kitchen and started banging cups around, “Still doing that?”

“Obviously,” Laura said. 

“Wait,” Carmilla said, “Shouldn’t you be in the middle of an 18hour work day by now? Are you skipping class?”

Laura let her eyes flutter shut, “Too tired to go.”

“Yeah,” Carmilla said, a mug in her hand, “You do still look like crap. You’re not over-using your ink, are you cupcake? Too caught up in heroic notions?”

Laura just ate another cookie.

Carmilla said nothing more but a mug of hot chocolate slipped onto the desk beside her before Carmilla whisked herself out the door. It might have been sweet if it wasn’t Laura’s hot chocolate in the first place.

And if Carmilla wasn’t a murderous vampire of course. 

#

Laura had finally worked it out. Pretending to be asleep, she forced herself to keep her breathing soft and steady as Carmilla moved about the room. If history held then Carmilla would go into the bathroom for nearly twenty minutes at one in the morning. 

But only once Laura was asleep. 

That one time she stayed up writing an essay, Carmilla hadn’t ducked into the bathroom. Like clockwork, Carmilla disappeared right at 1am. Close enough that she wouldn’t take her marker with her, not if she thought Laura was asleep. Laura lightly got to her feet, easing back the covers. Creeping forward, her eyes swept Carmilla’s side of the room. 

If she was a marker, where would she hide?

She found the red one jammed behind a collection of Nietzche’s works. Staring at it, Laura’s hand froze for a moment as the ingrained habit to never touch another person’s marker took over. She moved a little closer and then stopped again. 

Shaking her head, she grabbed a pencil and prodded the marker until it flipped, the dim light flowing from the slightly open bathroom door giving her just enough light to see. 

The marker was empty. The gauge on the side revealing absolutely no ink. Instead, the little window revealed small clumps of dried ink sticking to the edges of the tube. Nothing more. 

Laura’s breath caught, the pencil falling from her fingers. 

Carmilla was a vampire. 

She spun around as though Carmilla would suddenly burst from the bathroom and end her, draining her marker and snapping the case. Instead, she froze as soon as her eyes caught her roommate through the crack in the open door. 

Laura’s mouth opened. Then closed. Brain whirling. 

That was impossible. 

Carmilla had a marker in her hands and, as Laura watched, she wrote black words along the lines of her ribs.

#

She had a pie date with Danny the next day and the story came spilling from Laura’s lips. Danny listened, nodding in all of the right places. 

“But how can she have ink to write on herself if her red marker is empty?” Laura finished, “She doesn’t have red soulmate ink because I’ve seen her chest and there’s nothing over her heart. Which means that if her marker is empty, she has to be dead. But then her black marker wasn’t empty and if she was dead, it wouldn’t work.”

“What did Laf say?” Danny asked.

Laura frowned, “They said that maybe their information was wrong and it's just the red marker for vampires. After all, they’re dead but they still act like they’re alive. So half and half.”

“There you have it,” Danny said. 

Laura shook her head, “But it doesn’t feel right.”

“Laura,” Danny reached out to take her hand and Laura tried not feel like she was patronized, “You did a good job. It’s done. You got the intel and that was more than dangerous enough. Let us take it from here, okay?”

She agreed but something sat heavy in her chest until they got to the dorm room, Danny hovering just outside Laura’s door. She hesitated for just a moment then leaned in and kissed Laura on the cheek. Then smiled and walked away. 

Laura’s fingers itched.

#

They itched for two days until Laura caved, she grabbed her marker and stood in the bathroom to stare at the empty skin above her chest. She moved to write but her hand twitched, as though unsure as to what it wanted. 

Never waste your ink, her father always said. It would be fine.

She wrote Danny’s name in small block letters. 

24 hours later. There was the shadow of a ‘D’ on her skin.

Laura grinned at her reflection. Potential soulmate found.

But she didn’t write Danny’s name on her heart again. For some reason, it felt better scrawled across the top of her foot where all the little bones were. Steady and strong and unyielding. Her hand didn’t twitch once as she wrote it there. 

#

When Laura woke up from the nightmare, her hands automatically went to clutch at the black marker lying just above her head. As her grip tightened around it, she found Carmilla watching her. Sitting on her own bed, Carmilla’s kept her gaze steadily on Laura and something in her eyes brought Laura’s hammering heart back to a calm pace. 

There were galaxies in her eyes; the remnants of a thousand different words where names were written a hundred times over.

In Carmilla’s hands was her marker. The one Laura had searched so hard to find. 

Carmilla just held it between her fingers, a single fingertip on each end as she watched Laura. As she looked at Laura and spoke of stars, painting the universe in the meandering of philosophy as though she knew it would calm Laura’s racing heart. 

What Carmilla couldn’t have known was how it made her fingers twitch. Reminding herself that Carmilla was a bloodthirsty vampire and that Laura was her next victim, she managed to avoid uncapping the marker and instead asked Carmilla to attend the Zeta party with her. 

As friends. As a chance to start over. 

The agreed upon trap to capture the vampire. 

Even as the offer left her tongue and Carmilla accepted, Laura knew exactly where she would have written Carmilla’s name. No longer on her hipbone, Carmilla had moved to her shoulders. The place where heavy things are carried and burdens are dropped, the only place strong enough to carry whatever you could throw at it. A place where others could drop their load for just a moment and learn to breath again.

She didn’t write the name but as she leaped into bed Laura’s shoulder almost seemed to burn with need.

Her fingers itching for the name she couldn’t let herself write.

#

The itch only grew when Carmilla arrived for their date. She was dressed in a corset and leather pants, bringing champagne and smiling a small smile that Laura hadn’t seen before. Carmilla sat on the bed and gracefully poured them both a drink and Laura’s fingers itched touch her hand. She grabbed the cool glass instead. Carmilla spoke of balls that sounded like they were centuries gone and the sadness in her tone had Laura itching to write Carmilla’s name across her shoulders, making her burden a little lighter. Instead, she made a quip.

Carmilla pulled her close, fingers in the Laura’s hair, and Laura itched to touch her back. To play with the waves of her hair and ghost her fingers over Carmilla’s skin and to just touch. 

Before she could decide what she wanted, Danny burst into the room and the moment was lost.

#

Danny only left when Laura made her go. She left Laura with a kiss on the cheek and a vampire roommate tied to her chair. 

Carmilla groaned, “It’s one thing to tie me up cupcake but it’s a whole other form of torture to make me witness your disgusting mating rituals with the ginger giant.”

“As the one literally capturing girls and turning their ink gold,” Laura shot back, “I don’t think you’re in a place to be judging anyone about anything.”

Still the comments kept coming, one or two a day even as the starvation diet had Carmilla growing paler and paler.

“Would you have to stand on a step stool to kiss her properly?” Carmilla asked. 

“I don’t judge a girl, cutie. But how can you handle looking at the sheer colour of her hair for any length of time? Aren’t you worried you’ll go blind?”

“Did you know that red is the colour of death in some countries, cutie? Better not risk it.”

On the fourth day, Carmilla’s voice started going hoarse and raspy as her skin lost any sense of colour, “So, have you used up your red ink yet? Probably not. Might clash with Xena’s hair.”

“If you’re going to bother talking,” Laura snapped, “You might as well give us something useful.”

Carmilla managed a weak smirk, “My advice is incredibly useful. Here’s one: Better be careful if you ever share a bed. If she rolls over, the giant will probably squish you

Laura let out an angry huff and turned back to her laptop as Carmilla smirked at her back.

On the eighth day, Carmilla had pretty much stopped talking altogether and Laura was getting worried. Her fingers itched like crazy as Carmilla’s head lolled against her chest, barely even able to hold herself up as the starvation diet took it’s toll. Her eyes had deep circles under them and her skin was nearly translucent. 

Laura fiddled with her marker. She could write Carmilla’s name on her elbows. The underappreciated crook in her arms that made hugging possible. The joint that let you wrap others up in your warmth and hold them close until their shaking stopped and the world seemed just a little better. Instead, she forced herself to slide the marker back in her pocket. 

“Carm?” she called, lightly touching Carmilla’s shoulder. The vampire shook slightly, jerking awake. 

Carmilla’s head lolled slightly to the side as she looked at Laura out of the side of her dark eyes, “Don’t leave me in suspense cupcake. What’d I miss?” her voice was weak and tiny, “You and the giant finally declare your undying love for each other in your triumph over my capture.”

Laura kept her eyes on Carmilla. 

Her fingers itching. 

Slowly, she pulled back the collar of her shirt to reveal the shadow of a “D” that ran over her heart. “It won’t fill in any further than this,” Laura said softly.

Carmilla laughed. Thin and dry and more of a shaking cough than anything else, “Course not cupcake. She might want you but Xena doesn’t want your ink. She doesn’t think you have any strength to give her. Just wants to give you hers.”

Laura’s eyes went wide and she let go of her shirt as Carmilla’s head lolled back against her chest. 

On the ninth day, Carmilla started seizing and Laura couldn’t do it anymore. As Carmilla shook, Laura rushed to get blood to Carmilla’s mouth. 

She wouldn’t swallow it. 

“Come on, Carmilla!” Laura shouted, “Just drink it.”

Whether she was still being stubborn or literally couldn’t, Laura didn’t know. She was left with only one other option. Carmilla continued to shake as Laura popped the cap on her marker, letting it fall across the floor. Then she gave into the itch and wrote Carmilla’s name along the inside of her elbow.

Never waste your ink, her father always said. 

Carmilla stopped seizing and it didn’t feel like a waste, a sigh of relief coasting from Laura’s lips. When Laura held the mug of blood back to Carmilla, the vampire still pale and trembling, Carmilla looked at Laura and then the name on her arm. Staring at Laura’s elbow and her name on the skin, Carmilla drank.

#

Laura tried not to smile, her hand pressing into Carmilla’s name on her arm, as she realized that Carmilla had been flirting with her. 

Carmilla groaned and asked to be staked. 

Laura just pressed her arm harder. 

#

With the last hours of Carmilla’s name on Laura’s elbow, she finally told Laura her story. It opened as a tale that sounded like something from a book with Countesses and ballrooms and dances. Even when Carmilla was murdered, she’d painted the picture of a life after death where she could see anything she wanted to see and do anything she wanted to do. 

But then Carmilla told Laura of how she had to return to Silas each year. Making friends, trapping girls, turning them over to her mother. Her eyes grew sad as she said, “And then there was Elle.”

Laura’s fingers itched again.

Carmilla spoke of how she had no ink of her own but had still managed to fall in love with a girl who she was supposed to turn over to her mother. She’d loved a girl whose name she could never write. Never to give a portion of her herself away, even for a moment. 

She told of how Elle had only ever had the first three letters of Carmilla’s name written as a shadow across her chest but had chosen to use her red marker anyway. To mark herself as Carmilla’s. The red marker was always a choice. 

Carmilla hadn’t even known until it was too late. 

If Carmilla had been human then her own name would have sorched itself across her chest the moment Elle started writing. She would have known to stop her or at least explain everything she truly was. But Vampires don’t have working makers. Their skin can’t sense their soulmates. 

The red ink doesn’t cross over. 

Only the black still seemed to work.

Taking life but not love. Transient and never permanent.

So Carmilla didn’t know until her mother had Elle by the arm, ripping aside a piece of Elle’s dress to show Carmilla the red ink of her name. 

“For a moment,” Carmilla said softly, “my heart jumped.”

Then, her mother had told Elle that Carmilla was a vampire and everything Carmilla had ever feared had washed over Elle’s face. The last Carmilla ever saw of her, Elle was trying to claw her own skin off to get Carmilla’s name off her chest. 

It was the image that lingered as her mother locked Carmilla in a coffin of blood for nearly a century. Laura said nothing. Couldn’t say anything. Her hand just pressed against her own heart as her fingers itched to write Carmilla’s name somewhere. Anywhere. 

But then.

Carmilla told Laura to get her markers.

Laura stared at her.

Carmilla rolled her eyes, “Go for it, cutie. They’re behind the books on the shelf.”

Scrambling to her feet, Laura practically leapt across the room to get them. When her hand paused, still unwilling to touch the markers, Carmilla snarled and said, “Just grab them before I change my mind.”

So Laura touched them. They seemed heavy in her hand as she carried them back over to Carmilla. Both the red and the black rolling between her fingers. The red was empty, exactly as Laura remembered with small clumps of drying ink inside the chamber. However, her eyes widened when she saw the black. There was the smallest amount of ink still in the cartridge, barely enough to slosh over the window.

She looked up to find Carmilla watching her examine them. 

“They go empty when you die,” Carmilla said, voice almost expressionless. Almost. “And you can feel it, you know. Like the very blood is draining from your veins except it’s ice instead of fire and it feels as though your chest is freezing over. Every icicle in your veins piercing through the skin to tear you into tiny pieces. Your heart freezes. Your lungs turn to cobwebs and there is dust on your tongue.”

Laura’s fingers itched. 

“When you come back,” Carmilla said, “they don’t fill again. Maman told me but I still spent months watching them, hoping that the ink would return. It doesn’t. Obviously. A vampire does not have a life or love to give. But we still need it.”

Laura frowned.

Carmilla refused to look at her, “It’s not just blood we take. We also require ink to survive, the literal lifeblood that we no longer have. Maman prefers to take her ink by force, capturing her victims and tearing open their markers to drink directly from source. Then, when the body is dead, she returns for the blood.”

“Is that what she’s doing to those girls?” Laura asked, “Taking their blood.”

“I don’t know for sure,” Carmilla shook her head at Laura’s next unasked question, “I don’t. I know Maman needs the ink but I don’t know why it turns golden. I swear. She never told me. I don’t get my own ink like that anyway. I prefer to trade for it. The afterlife is rather fond of deals.”

Visions of study buddies danced in her head. Dozens of girls with Carmilla’s name written on their finger. 

She held up the black marker and the small amount of liquid inside it, “Is that what this is?”

Pausing, Carmilla shook her head, “No. That. That was unexpected. I only take as much from the girls as I need so there’s nothing extra to store in the marker. It’s just a simple deal. I haven’t had ink in my marker in decades. The marker ink can’t be taken or traded for, what vampires get from our victims just goes directly to keeping us functioning. It’s not for writing.” 

There was a question in there somewhere but Laura found another image leaping to her mind. 

She frowned even as she absently traced the bottom of Carmilla’s empty red marker over Carmilla’s name on her elbow, “But then what were you doing that time in the bathroom when I saw you writing?” 

Then her eyes went wide again, practically stabbing herself in the arm with Carmilla’s marker, “Not that I meant to be spying but the door was open and I was up and I know that I shouldn’t have been snooping but we thought that you were involved in the kidnappings which you kind of are. Plus, I thought I saw words that time you weren’t wearing a shirt. Not that I was looking. At you. I mean, not that you’re not nice to look at but I just meant that-”

Carmilla snort cut her off.

Laura looked up.

“Easy there cupcake,” Carmilla said.

Laura nodded then looked at Carmilla expectantly, waiting for answers.

“Oh what the hell,” Carmilla said, “I’ve spilled my guts tonight. Why stop there?” She struggled slightly for a moment, words clearly on the tip of her but nothing coming out. Finally she closed her eyes and threw her head back to stare at the ceiling, “I do write names but it’s just a normal sharpie. No power in it. Just a normal marker. Still, even that would be enough to drive my mother up the wall. Which is ridiculous considering that everyone I ever cared about is long gone and the universe is just a sea of ever-increasing chaos anyway. It helps no-one and yet I, selfishly, do it anyway.”

“Why?” Laura asked quietly, her own marker between her fingers and pressed between the black and the red that belonged to Carmilla. 

Carmilla swallowed, her words a whisper, “I don’t want to forget them.”

“They mean something to you, Carm,” Laura said, “I wouldn’t call writing their names selfish.”

“It doesn’t even do anything. It’s just some names written in marker; there’s no power or soul behind it.” Carmilla said.

It was Laura’s turn to speak softly, “Technically? Yes. But I’m not sure it means nothing.” Then, when Carmilla just shook her head, muttering that it was sappy and sentimental, Laura asked her, “Where do you write them?”

There was a pause.

Then Carmilla shifted, like she was trying to move her arms against the ropes to show Laura exactly where they went. Looking at her shoes instead of the ceiling, Carmilla said, “My parents. My little brother. My sister for all she’d laugh if she knew. I write them on my ribs. One in the space between each bone. I don’t have a heartbeat anymore but my chest still makes a facsimile of breathing. Bits of air are the best I can still give them.”

Laura clenched the markers harder. 

“And Elle,” Carmilla said, “Elle goes on my spine. Right at the base.”

She didn’t explain why but Laura could think of a hundred reasons. The place that held the rest of you up. A place that you could never see. Inaccessible and difficult to write on. A penance with every letter as you twisted around yourself to try and write the word. 

So Laura stood, twisting slightly as she popped the lid off her marker and tried to make the letters work. They felt lopsided and crooked but she persevered. 

Never waste your ink, her father said. 

When Laura turned around to show Carmilla her back, a shaky ‘Elle’ written over the base of her spine, Carmilla’s gasp made the name feel like anything but a waste. 

Laura pretended not to see the tears in Carmilla’s eyes as she met Laura’s gaze, mouth hanging open. So Laura just duct-taped a glass of blood to Carmilla’s chest and went to bed. 

#

Elle’s name had long faded as Carmilla remained tied to the chair for another week, the group deciding that she had to stay tied up against Laura’s protests. 

Someone else set Carmilla free; Will crept into the room and cut her loose. 

Laura only realized that he was a vampire when his power arm locked around her chest to hold her steady as his other hand crept into her back pocket. Her marker in his fist. Her stomach rolled as she struggled, desperate to get it out of his hands.

Will just laughed and popped the cap, Carmilla watching him carefully but making no move to intervene. “Maybe,” He said, “I’ll just have a little taste.” Laura could hear the shtick as his fangs slid out and he moved to pierce the side of the marker to get at the ink beneath. 

Carmilla punched him in the jaw.

He reeled back and Laura grabbed the marker, some of the ink smearing messily over her hand as she raced to grab it. Then she dove behind Carmilla. 

“You’re going to regret that,” Will said, looking at Carmilla. 

Then he raced from the room, leaving Carmilla staring after him and twitching. 

Before Laura’s thank you could leave her tongue, the marker was whisked from her hand again and suddenly ice ripped through Laura’s chest. It was barely a moment but enough to turn her body cold and leave goosebumps on her skin. 

The tip of the marker pressed to one of Carmilla’s fangs. 

Then she threw the marker back at Laura and supersped from the room.

#

Huddling under a massive pile of blankets that still didn’t remove the chill of the ice from her body, Laura ran her fingers over the marker again and again. The body of the tube was intact. No punctures. No holes. No leaking ink. 

Just a marker that was barely filled to half volume. 

Her head jerked up when Carmilla stormed back in the room and Laura slammed her marker against her chest, safely hidden under her hands and the blankets. 

Carmilla ignored her, grabbing a book and shoving her nose into it. 

“You took it,” Laura said with as much force as she could muster. With ice in her veins, it wasn’t much. 

“I had to,” Carmilla’s voice was hard, “You kept me tied up for weeks and starved me for 9 days. I didn’t have the energy to get that little cretin before he reported back to my mother. I didn’t have another choice. He’s taken care of, in case you were wondering, snapped his markers like a twig.”

Laura clenched her own a little tighter. 

They stayed silent for a moment, Carmilla reading as Laura shivered under her blankets and trying to keep her teeth from chattering. She didn’t do a great job.

“It’s barely fall,” Carmilla snapped, “I don’t think teeth chattering is necessary.”

“I’m sorry,” Laura snapped back. I got cold when you took the ink and absolutely nothing seems to be warming me up. I apologize if it’s an inconvenience for you.” 

Carmilla looked up, her eyes widening for just a moment over the book. Then her gaze dropped again to return to her reading. Two minutes later she was tossing the book aside, “I’m taking a shower,” she said, “I smell like the bottom of an abattoir.”

“Fine.” Laura huffed. 

A pillow and a blanket hit her in the face, when she managed to get them off. Carmilla was already gone. Grumbling, Laura arranged the new items so that they joined her nest and made everything just a little warmer. 

However, that hardly mattered when five minutes later a delicious heat spread across her chest some seemingly nowhere. Melting the ice and turning her into a warm, sleepy burrito. She was asleep before Carmilla got out of the shower. 

When she woke up; Carmilla was sleeping on a bed without blankets or a pillow. 

#

Over the next several days, Carmilla kept accidentally making too much hot chocolate and leaving mugs of the stuff on Laura’s desk as she worked. The liquid piping warm. 

When she went in the shower, there was always warm water left when for weeks she’d had nothing but cold after Carmilla’ hour long productions. 

When Laura got up in the morning, there was always an extra blanket draped over her bed that she couldn’t quite remember pulling on top. Carmilla sleeping without a single one. 

After a week, Laura started draping her blankets over the sleeping Carmilla when Laura left for class, letting herself smile when Carmilla mumbled softly and curled up with her nose in the blanket. 

After two weeks, Betty’s name still on Laura’s shin even though her marker had somehow managed to fill itself back up to 3/4s full much faster than expected, Laura took her burrito of blankets and plunked down next to Carmilla as she sat reading on her bed. Shoving and extra blanket into her arms and pulling the book from her hands, Laura forced Carmilla to watch Doctor Who with her. 

She might have asked her Dad to send the DVD’s down special. 

When Carmilla shivered on the third night, Laura sleepily found herself opening up her burrito blankets and pulling Carmilla tight against her side. 

#

“I think we’re friends,” Laura said, absently stirring her hot chocolate as Danny looked at her like she’d grown a second head. Shrugging and leaning back on her bed, Laura smiled, “Yeah. I don’t know. It’s just one of those things. I don’t think she really has a lot of friends.”

Danny shook her head, “Just. Be careful okay? Call me every night, maybe? Just so I know you’re safe.”

Laura frowned but Danny didn’t seem to notice, instead she reached out and took Laura’s hand in hers. That was the first time Laura realized that Danny had Laura’s name written on her palms. 

Her palms. 

She twisted Danny’s hands over to look at them better, “This is where you think I belong?” Laura asked.

“Of course,” Danny said, “I wanted to talk to you about that actually. Well, not talk exactly.”

Laura had no idea what she was talking about until Danny pulled back the collar of her shirt. Fighting her need to gasp, Laura just let her eyes fall the curves of her name shadowed over Danny’s heart. The name nearly complete with only a little left on the final “a” to draw itself in. 

“It’s been filling itself in for a while now,” Danny said, “And I thought that yours might be the same.”

“Danny…” Laura said softly. Danny was looking at her with so much hope that it hurt for Laura to pull her collar back. But she did it. 

Only the shadow of a “D” on her skin. Not filled in any further. “It hasn’t changed in months,” Laura said, “I’m sorry.”

Danny’s hand came out, as if to touch, before pulling back and pressed to her own chest, “You could choose me anyway,” Danny said quickly, “The red marker works regardless and just because it hasn’t filled in yet. You could still choose me.”

“I could,” Laura said. Yet as she looked at Danny, with Laura’s name written across her palms like she was something to hold and treasure and keep safe, she knew that even if Danny’s shadow was on her skin she would never use the red marker to write her name. “I could choose you.” Laura said, forcing herself not to look away, “But I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t need someone who loves me with their palms. I already have my Dad for that and I don’t need another one.”

So Danny and Laura’s name on her palms left. Just as the dorm room door was closing, the bathroom creaked open. Fighting the sting in her throat, Laura looked up to find Carmilla perched in the doorway. She frowned. Had Carmilla been in there the whole time? What could she have possibly been doing for that long?

Laura quirked her head, trying to figure out if Carmilla was considerate enough to stay in the bathroom instead of interrupting her break-up with Danny.

“Smooth sundance,” Carmilla said, sauntering across the room.

Maybe not.

Laura groaned, “You suck.”

Carmilla laughed, “Quite literally.”

The laugh died as an explosion sounded outside and, even as Laura raced to check it out, Carmilla got there first. She shoved Laura away from the window and slammed it closed the moment they saw the giant mushrooms. 

#

Carmilla denied that she had acted to quickly in an effort to save Laura from the mushroom spores. 

She denied that she came with Laf and Laura to the library in an effort to keep them safe.

She denied that she was reading an ancient Sumerian tome about immortal gods who could be stealing girls simply because Laura asked her to.

She denied that she was worried about Perry as Perry paced around their dorm room and muttered things about finding Lafontaine. 

She denied that she was worried about Laf. 

Laura was thankful that Carmilla never denied that she enjoyed dancing together. In a brief moment of levity, Carmilla extended her hand to Laura and pulled her into a waltz. Laura’s skin buzzed and her fingers itched as Carmilla softly held her hand and twirled her around before bringing her in closer. Face to face and chest to chest. 

From that distance, Laura eye’s went wide as she looked down and thought she saw something peeking out from Carmilla’s shirt. The edge of a word written across her skin. Over her heart. 

A shadow name. 

But that would mean Carmilla had used her ink. 

Laura wanted to ask but held her tongue, remembering markers that filled too quickly and warmth flooding over her chest when the world seemed to cold and Carmilla stomping to the bathroom but the shower water taking far too long to start. 

She wanted to ask but Carmilla would have denied it anyway. 

#

As Laura lay on Carmilla’s bed while Carmilla took the floor beside her, the shadow of Danny’s name disappeared from Laura’s chest. 

She wondered what would happen if she ever wrote Carmilla’s name over her heart.

Her fingers itched.

#

Carmilla didn’t deny it when she volunteered to get the sword. The words, “of course I’m doing it for you,” falling off her tongue.

#

They kept right on itching as Carmilla stared at her from across the room. Face broken, body slumped, just watching and listening as Laura played back a recording. A recording where Carmilla gave Kirsch up to her mother in exchange for Laura’s life.

Carmilla didn’t deny it.

They itched as Laura looked at the girl whose name was begging to be written over her chest and Laura still said, “Run. Run and hide Carmilla. We’re done.”

The markers were a choice. Always a choice. 

This was her choice. 

So Carmilla left, not even bothering to grab her markers before running out the door. 

Still, Laura’s fingers itched as she uncapped the marker and started writing names. Betty’s name was rewritten across her shin and that names Natalie and Elsie fell just underneath it as she gave strength to the girls that they were going to save. 

Laf’s name went on the back of her left hand. A place where everyone could see and yet so rarely got enough attention. She was drawing attention to it now as they lay tied up on her bed, soon to be set free to lead them to the missing girls. Laf’s party brain desperate to throw themselves into the sacrifice. Perry was the only person still fighting by her side and Laura wrote her name on the back of her right hand. Mirroring Laf as Laura watched Perry stroke Laf head, the space over her own heart, and then grab a stake. 

Kirsch’s name went on the round part of her shoulder, a place where he’d patted her on the shoulder a hundred times over. Grinning cheerfully and calling her a bro. Strong. Yet soft. Slipping from her fingers before she knew he’d been given away. 

Danny’s name went back on her foot. She’d called the Summer Sisters for help. She didn’t know if they’d answer. 

She left Carmilla’s name off. 

Except, as she turned to go out the door something in her screamed to stop. So Laura grabbed the marker and slammed Carmilla’s name across the inside of her wrist. Refusing to think about why she belonged just over the veins. 

#

Her wrist burned when Carmilla appeared in the midst of the battle with a sword in her hands, pulling Laura back from the edge of the pit when she’d almost been pulled in by it’s light. Laura had come out of her daze with Carmilla looking down on her and Laura’s hands pressed against Carmilla’s chest. 

Carmilla’s hand tight around her name on Laura’s wrist. 

Slowly, without thinking it through, Laura tugged back Carmilla’s collar just an inch and saw the shadow of an “La” staring back at her. Her breath caught.

Before she could pull the shirt farther, Carmilla ripped away. She pressed a soft kiss to her name on Laura’s wrist and then was gone. Carmilla hacked her way through the crowd and, with one backward look, dove into the pit to kill the monster. 

#

Carmilla died.

Everyone else lived. 

Laura curled up in her burrito of blankets with no-one pressed against her side and pressed Carmilla’s markers to her chest, the smallest slosh of liquid left in the black one as Carmilla’s name faded from her wrist. Laura watched it go. The letters slowly turning from black to grey to just her skin. 

As though it had never been there. 

Just gone. 

The image of the shadowed letters on Carmilla’s chest fading with them. A mystery that she’d never get to uncover because Carmilla was dead and she was still here. Except.

Her fingers still itched. Fiercely and violently as though there was still ice living in the tips. 

Never waste your ink, her Dad had said. 

Laura wrote Carmilla’s name over her heart. Large curling letters that settled neatly in the spaces on her chest. Just once. Just to see it there once. She spent most of her day in the bathroom, just looking at the words from inside her blanket burrito. When the 24 hour mark hit, her breath hitched as the name started fading to grey. It’s time on her skin complete.

But.

While the “illa” faded away to reveal nothing but skin. The “carm” stayed. Strong and grey and everything that a shadow should be as it curled lightly over her heart, settling under the skin in a potential permanency that she felt with every beat of her heart.

Except it couldn’t be permanent.

Because Carmilla was dead. 

When Laura was six, she’d never used up all of her ink trying to bring her mother back to life. The word “mommy” written over every inch of her body in the giant, shaky script of a toddler. Her arms had been covered. Chubby stomach coated with words that circled around her belly button. Cheeks and forehead wearing the words of her mom as though it could undo car crashes and death.

It hadn’t brought her back.

Her mother was still dead and now Carmilla was nothing but a shadow left behind on her skin. A soulmate that would never be. 

Laura cried. 

#

The shadow was still over her heart when Danny burst into the room, Carmilla in her arms, “We found her in the pit,” Danny said and put Carmilla on Laura’s bed, “Now. She looks dead but she’s a vampire right?”

“Blood!” Laura shouted, “She needs blood.”

Leaping to the fridge for the blood that she’d never thrown away, Laura raced back and held it to Carmilla’s lips. The blood poured in, filling her throat and mouth and dribbling out onto her skin.

But Carmilla never swallowed. 

“Laura,” Danny said quietly, “I’m so sorry. I thought.”

Laura said nothing, instead she just reached into her pocket and grabbed the marker. Slowly, she uncapped it and stared at Carmilla. “Alright you stubborn vampire,” Laura said, “You’re going to wake up now.”

Never waste your ink, her father always said. 

She jammed the tip of the marker into one of Carmilla’s fangs. Her body immediately went cold, ice ripping down her spine as she watched the ink level in the marker drop. The cold shot through her, twisting into every crevice of her body until she was shivering with the pain of it. Eyes watering as ice filled her throat.

Carmilla swallowed. 

Laura jerked the marker back, capping it with shaky hands as Danny looked at her in horror. Laura didn’t care, eyes on nothing but Carmilla as the vampire swallowed again and the blood disappeared from her mouth. She didn’t even notice the cold as Carmilla slowly sat up. Her feet hanging over the edge of the bed.

With ice in her veins, Laura felt frozen until Carmilla said, “Well. That was a kick.”

Then Laura was bolting forward willing to let her frozen veins shatter if it meant that Carmilla was in her arms again. She slammed into Carmilla chest first, letting the shadow over her heart ram into Carmilla’s shoulder as her arms closed around Carmilla. The edges of Carmilla’s smile were in her peripheral as Carmilla softly touched her hands, thumb caressing her wrist. 

Then she turned in Laura arm’s, moving so quickly that Laura barely noticed Danny leaving the room. 

“You’re freezing,” Carmilla said, eyes on Laura’s face. 

“You were dead,” was all Laura said. “Or mostly dead. Kind of. I think that the rules are different for vampires than for normal people. Cause your ink is already gone so you’re mostly dead already. You just need a little kickstart.”

Laura’s marker was still in her hands and Carmilla turned her fingers, face dropping when she saw that Laura’s ink was barely a quarter full. 

“It’ll fill up again,” Laura said, cutting her off, “But you were dead and now you’re not and you’re hurt and I hugged you. I’m sorry if I hugged you too hard that you’re more hurt but you’ve been dead and I really wanted to hug you and-”

Carmilla stood, bringing herself eye to eye with Laura. 

Laura didn’t take a step back, forcing the words out again, “And I don’t mind being a little cold if it means that you’re back because I really missed you and I just wanted to make sure that you were okay. Because you were dead and I wanted you back and-”

Carmilla smiled. 

Carmilla kissed her. 

Messily and imperfectly because she was too busy smiling to kissing Laura properly. Then she pulled back, hands falling to Laura’s shoulders as though she wanted to make sure that Laura was okay. 

Laura just squealed and kissed her again. It was hard to feel cold when Carmilla was kissing her. Lips warm on her own and hands rubbing against her arms and back to warm them up. 

Eventually they broke apart, still clinging to each other as Laura had to stop to breath. Then she noticed Carmilla’s shirt, in slight disarray from the kissing, the edges of an “L” poking out. 

“So,” Laura said,” brushing her thumb over the letter, “You never write anyone’s name down huh?”

Dropping her head, Carmilla blushed. Still smiling as her thumb brushed over Laura’s wrist. 

#

It took two weeks before Laura felt it was safe to use her marker again. The first thing she wrote was Carmilla’s name. Back on her wrist where it belonged. On the place where skin was softest and the veins were so close to the surface that the letters had to dance between their blue lines as they brought blood back to her heart. 

Carmilla gave a little smile every time she saw it, almost as though she couldn’t believe that it was there. 

With an angry anglerfish god rumbling under the campus, they were forced to flee through the Styrian mountains without more than a few backpacks and their markers jammed into pockets. 

Laura was curled up in the hayloft in a barn, snow blowing widely outside, when Carmilla came over and curled up beside her. Sighing happily, Laura let herself sink into Carmilla’s side as Carmilla wrapped an arm around her shoulder to pull her close. 

Sharing the small bit of warmth she had against the cold. 

It was then that Laura noticed Carmilla’s wrist. She grabbed it, running her thumb over the black word written on Carmilla’s wrist, “What’s this?” she asked. 

Carmilla ducked her eyes and looked down. 

Laura continued to trace the letters. Carmilla’s writing looked like something out of a textbook, all fluid letters that bled into each other with loops and flourishes that gave cursive the elegance it was always supposed to have. 

“I don’t have much in my own marker,” Carmilla mumbled, “Just the little bit you give me and that wouldn’t be enough to write every day so I thought. Maybe.” She pulled her wrist away, “It’s ridiculous.”

Laura chased her hand, “No it isn’t.”

Carmilla shook her head, “It’s just sharpie.”

“I don’t care,” Laura said, entwining her fingers with Carmilla’s, “I like seeing it there. Whatever kind of marker it is. You still take the time to write it and the intention is clear. Okay?” She looked up at Carmilla, her girlfriend’s eyes still full of 300 years of names and words, “I don’t care if it’s sharpie or soul ink or pencil. It’s nice of you to do.”

She waited until Carmilla nodded before snuggling closer. 

With the names on her left and Carmilla’s right, they pressed together as they slept and Laura woke up with the faint outline of her name in sharpie across Carmilla’s name on her wrist.

#

It seems that they couldn’t avoid Silas or the trouble that came with it. No sooner had magic whisked them back to campus than Laura was already caught up in trying to solve the murder of a bunch of students. 

Murder made kidnapped girls seem like the better option. 

When she told Carmilla that she was staying to find the murdered kids justice, Carmilla had just shaken her head and resigned herself to staying too. Although she preferred lounging around their new house with a good book, she’d join Laura, Laf, and Perry in digging through dusty old files if Laura asked her too.

Only if Laura asked her too.

Every day, it made Laura smile to see Carmilla digging through boxes with Laura’s name flashing on her wrist. A freshly applied coat of sharpie each morning. When it seemed like the investigating was becoming too much or they were getting nowhere or Danny and Kirsch were fighting again, Laura just had to look over and see her name. 

The sharpie may not have been made of ink but that fact that it was there was more than enough. 

She was always quick to point out to everyone that Carmilla was a hero, ink or otherwise. 

“It’s not like that you know,” Carmilla told her one night, her thumb tracing Laura’s wrist as they sat downstairs once the others had gone to bed, “I’m not some hero who saved the day. Not the way you tell it.”

“Well what’s wrong with the way I tell it?” Laura asked.

“You say it like it was easy. Like I wasn’t scared the whole time. Like it’s your whole reason for liking me,” Carmilla traced her thumb along the ridges of her name, “Like it’s the only reason you write this every day.”

Laura paused, stunned. Her mouth opening but no words falling out.

“Well,” she said at last, “why do you write yours every day? It’s not because I’m some hero or something. I’m just a girl who passed her lit class on a vampire slaying technicality and you still seem to like me.”

Carmilla didn’t look at her, “It’s not the same. Mine isn’t made of ink. There’s no power in it.”

“I write your name on my wrist because that’s where it belongs,” Laura said, “where my blood is close to the surface and everything feels a little more real. And yeah, I think what you did was brave and amazing. But it’s not my reason for liking you. You’ve been defying your mother and writing sharpie names on the lines of your ribs long before you met me. Trying to save Elle. Writing my name in real ink after Will attacked and my veins turned cold.”

She felt Carmilla shift, something in her tone changing to a tease, “Well, how could you not fall for me then?”

Something in it almost felt hollow but Laura was distracted by the touch of Carmilla’s hand on her waist, slipping just under the fabric. 

Laura shook her head, “I’m pretty sure that i was falling for you right from that Zeta party.”

“You mean the one where you ambushed me? And accused me of kidnapping?” Carmilla teased, her fingers dusting a little higher up Laura’s torso.

Laura’s laugh was something between a chuckle and a moan, “I was terrified that you were going to eat me but I was a little disappointed that we never got our chance to stargaze and drink champagne.”

Carmilla grinned at her, moving in close as she gave one last swipe over Laura’s wrist, “Well there’s a solarium on the roof and I’m sure we could find something bubbly in the wine cellar downstairs.”

Sliding forward, Carmilla moved in closer to make every moment an agonizing buildup. Setting Laura’s senses alight, she slowly moved in to kiss Laura while her hands made circles on her back. Fighting not to moan into the kiss, Laura forced herself to stand. Two could play at being a tease. 

“Race you,” she said and took off towards the roof. 

Carmilla still beat her.

“Vampire speed is cheating,” Laura said as Carmilla handed her a glass.

Carmilla raised an eyebrow, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

An hour later, Laura was begging her to go faster as Carmilla uncapped her sharpie and started writing her name in tiny letters all over Laura’s body before dropping a kiss on each one. 

#

She learned that the shadow of her name on Carmilla read ‘Laur’.

Carmilla learned that Laura’s shadow said ‘Carmil’

#

Carmilla’s sister burst through the door like a bloody whirlwind even the remnants of Carmilla’s names were still sitting on her skin. She looked down at Laura, who was sitting wide-eyed on the chair with her marker out and Carmilla’s name half-written on her wrist, and casually said that she was going to have to kill Laura for killing their mother. 

‘Mattie’ had always been one of the names drawn across Carmilla’s ribs. She’d never expected to meet her like this. 

When Carmilla had intervened, Mattie had just laughed as her hand closed around the sharpie on Carmilla’s wrist, “Really kitten?” she said, “You’re still playing with that facsimile of an excuse for ink? I certainly hope you’re not still writing my name.”

Carmilla just shrugged.

“How sickenly sentimental of you,” Mattie said, “But fine. If you like the girl enough to fall for the sharpie charade then I can wait. I won’t kill her until you’re done with her.”

Laura didn’t find that particularly comforting. 

Instead, she dove into trying to find the murderer overturning every rock and reading every folder she could get her hands on. Unfortunately, every road seemed to lead straight to Mattie. The killer vampire who didn’t seem to have a qualm about murdering anyone who was even annoying to her. 

When Laura brought it up, Carmilla shook her head, “I know Mattie. She insisted. Sure. She’s loud and brash but this just isn’t her style.”

So Laura bit her tongue and kept digging while Carmilla just read her books. 

Mattie sold off books from the library and the whole thing vanished. With the library gone, it was Mattie’s fault when JP started cutting in and out. She cut student services. She pranced around in prada and never once gave a straight answer. She tried to sell off portions of the school, including the giant anglerfish god. Mattie hijacked her broadcasts. 

And Carmilla didn’t do a thing. Didn’t say a thing. Didn’t seem worried or upset or even to care. 

When Laura starting writing Laf and Perry and Danny and Kirsch and JP across her skin in addition to Carmilla’s name, Carmilla just told her to be careful. She never once wrote the name of any student who wasn’t Laura while Laura’s fingers itched to write books across her stomach. 

It took all of Laura’s pleading just to get Carmilla to spy on her sister and all they’d ended up with was a lecture on why vampires shouldn’t date humans. 

Mattie called it snacking. 

And Carmilla barely defended her. 

Only a simple, “She’s strong than you think,” entering the conversation to combat Mattie’s long speech. Still, Laura was determined to believe in her and still sighed happily when she ended up tucked against Carmilla’s side each night. 

“Do you think,” Carmilla asked one night, “that just tonight we can pretend that if I asked we’d run away? Somewhere that has no murder or sisters or schools and just go. We’d see the world and dance under the stars and never sleep in the same city twice? It would be just you and me.”

Laura shifted, her hands on Carmilla’s chest and tracing the shadow of an L up and down with her fingertips. Switching from index to middle to fourth to pinky to thumb and back again. “That would be nice,” she agreed.

Carmilla sighed under her touch. 

“But we can’t just run away.” Laura continued. Carmilla stiffened slightly under her, saying nothing as she went back to her book. Arm still around Laura’s shoulders. 

All Laura could think of was how everything pointed more and more to Mattie and Carmilla wasn’t putting any effort in. The only thing she willingly seemed to do each day was write Laura’s name on her wrist.

Everything else was like pulling teeth.

And now this. Now this desire to just leave everyone. 

“Carm,” Laura said, pressing her thumb into the shadow L to get Carmilla’s attention, “I know you just want to run away and forget everything. But how can we? Our friends are here and they need us. I can’t deal with thoughts of running away and you being broody or any of it. Not now.” She stroked the L one more time, “I need the heroic vampire. Can you just be that?”

There was a pause.

“Of course,” Carmilla said and something niggled at Laura that she’d said it wrong but then Danny burst into the room and there was no time to think about it.

#

For a moment, she thought she had the heroic vampire she needed when Carmilla threw out a slogan for Laura and Danny’s student uprising. Yet, when the uprising failed and they tried to regroup, everything fell apart. 

They learned that they had the right to elect a member of the student body to the board.

Laura asked Carmilla to do it. To go toe to toe with Mattie.

Carmilla said no.

“What?” Laura asked.

“No,” Carmilla said again, “I won’t do it. Find somebody else to play your hero.”

Laura put a hand on her wrist, covering Carmilla’s name with her palm, “What? What do you mean?”

“Just because I was willing to risk my life to save yours doesn’t mean I’m willing to betray my sister.” Carmilla said. She sat down, face hard and her hand pressed tight the hollow between her collarbones. “I’m not your crusader.”

Wrist left untouched as Laura’s name stared out at her. 

“But we need your help,” Laura said, “Everyone needs your help. I need your help. Doesn’t that matter? Don’t I matter?”

Carmilla shook her head, a dry and ugly chuckle falling from her lips, “There are other names on my skin Laura, they’re just not the ones you want. Mattie is my sister. She’s part of who I am. She matters. Not to you. To me. The other names don’t disappear just because your name is the one that filled in across my chest. They don’t disappear just because I love you.”

I love you.

I love you.

The words hung in the air between them like the unfinished shadows on their chests. Laura’s breath caught and her throat suddenly started burning as tears pricked at her eyes. 

“Then help me,” Laura said. “I need you to be the kind of person who helps and fights.”

Carmilla ducked her head again, shaking, “You haven’t listened to a word I said.” She stood, staring at Laura like she was some entity that Carmilla no longer understood. Face hard. Cold.

“I’m done.”

Then she walked out, leaving Laura was her jaw dropped and words spilling out after her, “Carm. Please, Carm!” But Carmilla was already gone and Laura’s voice was shaking so much she didn’t know if her words would have made sense anyway. The shadow across her chest turned to ice, each letter of Carmilla’s name suddenly poking a hole into her skin. Laura kept talking, her words a hiccup as tears coated her cheeks in waves and she tried to pretend that everything was fine. 

That she was fine. 

That her chest wasn’t burning cold and the girl whose name was on her wrist hadn’t just walked out the door. Her body betrayed her, wrenching with sobs that had her running from the room to dive into her bed and clutch her markers to her chest. The black that still wanted to write Carmilla’s name over and over on her wrist and the red that would never have the chance to learn the letters of Carmilla’s name.

#

It had been three days since Carmilla broke up with her and the shadow on her chest hadn’t disappeared. 

Laura stared at it in the mirror, shirt a crumpled mess on the floor as she shoved another scoop of ice cream into her mouth, “Carmilla left.” She told the shadow, “She left. She dumped me and we’re done. So just go away. Go away.”

It didn’t go away. 

“She said that her shadow was filled in with my name. The whole thing. And she still broke up with me. She didn’t choose me. So what do you know,” Laura pointed the spoon at it, “It’s not like a loved her. We only knew each other for months. That would be crazy. I’m nowhere near using my red marker. And now I can’t. Not on Carmilla. So just go away.”

It didn’t go away.

Laura crumbled, those five letters “CARMI” staring back at her as her forearms slammed against the bathroom counter and tears dripped into the sink as she hiccupped the same phrase over and over. 

“She didn’t choose me.”

“She didn’t choose me.”

“She didn’t choose me.”

Running to her bedroom, Laura slammed both her markers into a drawer and locked it. The ink had caused her nothing but trouble.

Never waste your ink, her father always said. 

Never again. 

#

The next day was the first time that Laura didn’t write Carmilla’s name on her wrist. 

It was also the day Carmilla came back. All leather pants and bad attitude, demanding that she be given back her portion of the house.

It somehow still stung to see Carmilla’s wrists bare.

#

Carmilla was back to being the worst roommate in the world. She left blood bags all around the house. She came home half drunk on blood at all hours of the night. She interrupted Laura’s broadcasts and flung clothing around the living room, snarky comments filtering over every conversation that Laura tried to have. 

It was almost a relief when the ‘mi’ faded from Carmilla’s name, leaving just ‘car’ on her chest.

Almost. 

None of the shirts Carmilla wore let Laura see if any shadow of Laura was left on Carmilla’s body.

She didn’t care anyway. She was done with markers, her own and everybody else’s. 

But when Mattie lost control of the board and a war against vampires lead to Carmilla coming home with an arrow in her chest, Laura held Carmilla tight. From her vantage point, she could still see the hint of an ‘L’ poking out from the blood, no idea how much more was hidden under the hole.

So when Carmilla was lying on the couch, arrow removed as she struggled for breath, Laura went upstairs. She wasn’t welcome downstairs. Didn’t have the right anymore. It was Mattie brushing the hair off Carmilla’s forehead and looking after her.

Except. 

There was still something vampires needed to heal properly.

Laura unlocked the door, grabbed the black marker, and wrote Carmilla’s name across the base of her space. The place that Carmilla taught her was for things you regret, things you didn’t want to look at, things you hated that you still cared about it.

But you still cared.

She never saw when it disappeared but she did feel when the shadow on her chest came screaming back to life. Perry had gone overboard, attacking Mattie who had retaliated in kind by snatching her marker and stealing a sip. Laf going to Perry’s defence as an image of Perry’s shadow over their heart flashed in Laura’s mind. They’d turned on Carmilla when she’d reassured them that Mattie hadn’t broken the marker, just taken some ink. 

Laf had nearly jumped Carmilla right there. 

Which left Laura to clean up the mess, shouting orders through her shaky throat that was seconds from crying but simply didn’t have the time to bother with tears. When everything was taken care of, she found Carmilla waiting for her in the living room. 

“Curly Sue okay?” Carmilla asked.

Laura nodded, “Yeah. She’ll be fine. Not that you care.”

Carmilla’s voice was as tired as Laura felt, “Not that I care.”

There was a pause as Laura tried to gather her thoughts. Her hand went to her pocket but there was no marker to meet her fingers, the two markers both locked away again. “So why me?” she asked, “Why do you care about me enough to risk your life and add my name to the short list of people who you’ve written on your skin.”

“What makes any person sacred to another?” Carmilla asked and Laura almost smiled at the familiar sound of a philosopher coming off Carmilla’s tongue. 

She was too tired for smiles. Her markers weren’t even refilling anymore. Even though she’d left them for weeks, with only the one slip of Carmilla’s name, they never made it past half. She was drained. Empty. Sarcasm was all that she could manage, “Oh yeah, I was feeling really sacred when you were leaving blood bags everywhere.”

Carmilla crossed the room, moving to her side and Laura had to close her eyes against the urge to reach out and touch her, “I know it isn’t pretty but that’s part of it too.” Carmilla said, “She isn’t mine. You are.”

Laura’s throat clogged all over again, not even looking over as Carmilla continued, “To annoy or not. To love or not. To save or not.”

The word love burned itself into her chest like a brand. For the first time in days, her tears leaked out, “Carm, you can’t just say-”

She cut herself off when the brand turned to heat as she literally felt the shadow of an ‘m’ write it’s way back across her skin, knowing that if she lifted her shirt it would have ‘carm’ staring back at her. 

“I know,” Carmilla said and for the first time Laura heard her voice hitch, “You don’t want any possessive vampire crap.” She pressed a hand to space between her collarbones as Laura fought back the tears with a hand on her wrist, “You want the kind of love that clicks. The kind where our shadows fill in and we both write red names across our chests, claiming each other as soulmates. Red ink and a matching scarred set of names on each of us.”

Laura nodded, hating that she did so but letting the tears flow freely with no-one to catch them. Her hand too busy holding her own wrist. Carmilla too far away.

Carmilla continued, “But I don’t have any red ink to give you. My love will always be nothing more than a shadow on my skin. And maybe that’s not enough. All I know is that in more than a century, you’re the only name who has ever even gotten a single letter. You’re the only new name that I’ve written down.”

The empty markers in Carmilla’s hand, perfectly still in her grip, shone slightly in the soft light.

Finally, Laura forced herself to turn to her, “I don’t know what you want me to say. I wish it didn’t matter but it does. Not the red. But the black.”

There was silence as Laura looked at her. Really looked at her. All pale skin and dark hair and tired eyes that were full of unshed tears when she looked at Laura.

Carmilla’s voice was tinged with quiet desperation, “Do you miss me?”

Laura’s sob was a laugh, “Like someone tore the words right off my skin.”

#

Just as Carmilla was walking away, she stopped quietly telling Laura exactly where Mattie kept her markers. Just in case. Just in case Mattie threatened her again. 

Except Laura made a mistake and told Danny. 

And the next time Mattie threatened them, her hand around Danny’s throat, Danny reached out and snapped the markers over her knee.

More than Mattie’s scream, it was the crack of the markers that haunted Laura’s dreams. The sound that rebounded through her ears as Carmilla cradled Mattie’s dying body in her arms. The tears streaming down Carmilla's face as she gently laid Mattie on the ground and turned to kill Danny in return. 

Laura’s fingers itched. The itched and itched and she wanted to write Carmilla’s name over evey inch of her body the same way she had with her mother’s name when she was a child. Anything to get rid of that sad and defeated and angry look on Carmilla’s face that covered all of the hurt. 

When Laura jumped in front of Carmilla, crying that it was her fault. Somehow, another shadow letter tore it’s way across her chest even as Carmilla gripped tightly to her neck and told Laura of everything that Mattie had been to her. 

“And she’s dead,” Carmilla said. She shoved Laura back, letting her go as her voice turned into a cold mocking interpretation of Laura’s voice, “Be good for me, Carmilla. Change for me, Carmilla. Burn down everything you’ve ever loved for me, Carmilla.”

“That’s not fair,” Laura shouted, voice still shaking as she jumped towards her, “I never asked for any-”

“Stay away from me!” Carmilla roared the words and hurled something straight at Laura. She caught it on reflex, a sob catching in her throat when she realized that it was Carmilla’s sharpie. The one she used to write her names. 

“The next one of you who comes near me, I swear to God,” Carmilla continued, “I will kill.”

Then she stormed from the room, leaving Laura with ‘Carmi’ on her chest and a sharpie in her hands. 

Carmilla was done writing names. 

#

As Laura lay awake and stared at the ceiling, she wondered if there was any shadow left on Carmilla’s chest. 

The first shadow ‘L’ of Carmilla’s name slowly carving its way down her own skin as she got out of bed to defend against the men trying to break into their house because they were defying Mattie’s replacement.

It was still slowly getting longer when Laura called Carmilla, trying to convince her to come and help them. Help all the kids trapped on campus. She tried telling Carmilla that she was wrong and it wasn’t about one person being a hero, it was about everyone being everyone else’s hero. About caring for each other and choosing each other. 

The ‘L’ finished its path just as Carmilla laughed in her face, told her the world wasn’t a story, and shut off the connection. 

Taking a deep breath, Laura nodded. 

Carmilla didn’t choose her. She already knew that. 

Flipping Carmilla’s sharpie between her fingers, she started writing every name on campus that she could think of. The names twisting and winding over her legs. She didn’t have enough soul ink for them all but she could give them this. 

She put her own markers in her pocket but didn’t use them. 

#

Danny was dying in her lap and Laura tried to hold her close as ink spilled from Danny’s markers, shattered by a well placed blow from Theo’s knife. 

“No no no,” Laura said. She pulled out her black marker, quickly writing Danny’s name on her arm to make up for the lost ink. Once. Twice. Three times.

Danny’s hand covered her own, stopping her fingers, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I meant what I said before. That it was worth it. That I’m not scared. I’m not scared. I’m not-” Her markers ran dry and she slumped on Laura’s lap. 

“How could you!” Laura screamed at the boy who’d killed Danny, “She trusted you!”

When she saw that there was still a shadowed ‘Lau’ on Danny’s chest, it felt more like she was screaming it at herself.

#

The markers hadn’t saved Danny. Her meager amount of ink not enough to be worthwhile. Pointless. A couple of lines of ink hadn’t meant a thing in the grand scheme of things. 

#

Carmilla was shoved into the room in chains and Laura couldn’t bring herself to care. Nothing she could do. So she just sat, staring forward when her captors complain about not getting a reaction. 

“We heard you,” Laura said.

“Wait what?” Anger and fear lurked in Carmilla’s tone but Laura’s fingers didn’t itch. She couldn’t even feel them to know if they did. Nothing but numb, “You beg me to come,” Carmilla continued, “To save you and I do even though you blew me off-”

“I blew you off?” Laura whirled around, “I’m not the one who was all the universe is cold and empty and ink doesn’t matter. Evil wins regardless. Well guess what, you didn’t come and it did.” She held out her arm, the sloppy lines of Danny’s name painted over her skin, “Danny’s dead and I couldn’t save her.”

Carmilla’s eyes widened.

She was pushed to her knees as a man stood over her with a sword. 

Laura trailed her fingers over her heart and wondered if the shadows would disappear when Carmilla died or if she’d be forced to bear them longer. Her hand went to her wrist, feeling the bumps of her veins and place where Carmilla’s name was supposed to go. She traced Carmilla’s name over and over. The loop of the C and the lines of the Ls. 

Carmilla’s name was supposed to go there. 

Then Perry was shoving something into her hands, a pair of marker with the name of the man who held the sword written across her side. 

Laura made her choice. 

Just before the sword fell, she cracked the markers over her knee. He fell to the ground, screaming. Dying. But Laura hardly noticed because all at once the rest of Carmilla’s name blazed across her skin, like a brand digging into her bones as the full CARMILLA shadow wrote itself across her chest. 

It hurt but somehow didn’t. Like the moment when you stretch just right and your body makes a popping sound that you hadn’t expected. For a moment, she stared at Carmilla in a daze and Carmilla just stared back. 

Then Carmilla extended her hand as sirens went off around them.

“What have I done?” Laura whispered, suddenly dropping the broken marker pieces. 

“Nothing you can’t spend a long life regretting somewhere else,” Carmilla replied, hand still out.

Laura took it.

#

Managing to outrun the people looking for them, Carmilla lead her to the library. Laf following behind them. 

But Perry was gone. JP was gone. The school was lost. 

Carmilla’s mother was back. She’d been back the whole time, living inside Perry’s body and orchestrating the whole thing to give her total control of the school. 

Laura had played right into her hands. 

As Carmilla wrapped Laura in a blanket like a burrito, she still hadn’t had time to look at the shadows on her chest. The bitterness in her mouth not coming from a place of regret at her actions but a regret that she didn’t regret them. So she just sat and stared with Carmilla sitting beside, chatting about anything she could think of. 

Eventually she broke, trying to make Carmilla understand, “I fought so hard trying to fix this place and we lost so much trying to save it. Your sister. Danny. And then the moment came and I killed him. I burned that poor man to the ground and I didn’t care. When I thought he was going to kill you. I didn’t care. I just wanted to save you. And I lost us everything.”

Carmilla just watched, her face soft and attentive as Laura spoke. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, Laura burrowed forward into Carmilla’s arms. Her burrito blanket never warm enough without Carmilla as a part of it. Carmilla’s arms can around her easily, tucking Laura against her chin. She cradled Laura’s head with her hand, smoothly her hair as Laura sniffed. 

“We all had a hand in this,” Carmilla said at last as Laura pulled away, “Not just you. You didn’t do it alone.” She brushed her thumb over Laura’s cheek, “I might not always like the choices you make or the way things turn out but I think it would be infinitely more tragic if you let that stop you from trying.”

Laura just sniffed, “I don’t even know how anymore.”

Suddenly there was a marker in her vision, the smallest glint in the dark letting Laura make out the word ‘Mircalla’ on the side. 

“I have a little left,” Carmilla said, “I think you need it more than me.”

Laura shook her head, “You shouldn't bother. You were right. It doesn’t do anything. Couldn’t save my mom or Danny. Didn’t keep Sarah Jane from dying. Didn’t help us get out of this mess we’re in. It’s pointless. Better locked away.” She held up her own, still stuck at half full except the small amount lost for Danny, “They don’t refill anymore.”

She’d never seen Carmilla look quite so sad. 

Before Laura could stop her, Carmilla popped the top and, without looking down, wrote Laura’s name in the soft space between her collar bones. Nearly on her throat. “This is where you belong,” Carmilla said softly, “Not my wrist but in the soft place between the hardness. The place where words come from and emotion is stored, the place where tears go when they’re stuck in your throat and the place where laughs are born.”

Laura’s fingers came out then retreated.

She said nothing, just tucked her markers away and handed Carmilla back her sharpie.

#

For nearly a month, she ignored the fact that Carmilla’s full name was written over her chest and ignored the fact that her markers didn’t refill and ignored the fact that Laf and Carmilla were on a mission to kill the Dean. 

Instead, Laura knitted scarves for the days she felt too cold and re-read Harry Potter for the 57th time. 

But the markers were still tucked in her back pocket, constantly reminding her that they were there.

They reminded her every time The Dean made a broadcast and Laura’s heart ached for Perry. They reminded her when the water turned to blood and the whole world seemed to turn red. They reminded her when they started finding cryptic and creepy prophecies in the library. They reminded her when Carmilla and Laf came up with another crazy plan that had them diving through magical doors and into the unknown. 

The temptation was greatest then. As Laura scrubbed the library from top to bottom, her fingers itched to write Laf and Carmilla’s names on her skin. To help keep them safe from the ‘tornado of knives’ that they’d thrown themselves into. 

She reminded herself that the ink did nothing. 

Still, she grabbed them both tight when they came back, giving her twitching fingers something else to do. 

#

The shadow letters on her chest seemed to pulse when Carmilla took the broken shards of Mattie’s markers and put them on the desk. The pain of memories visible on Carmilla’s face

The shadows ached and Laura had to press against them to stop the hurt. She didn’t love Carmilla. She couldn’t love Carmilla.

The red ink wouldn’t prove anything anyway.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to wake up with Carmilla’s fingers in her air before they snapped away and it was perfectly normal for her to panic when meeting her ex in front of the shower. As for the destruction of the glasses? Accidents happened.

#

Accidents like kissing your ex. 

They’d been arguing and leaning in and close and Laura suddenly saw the shadow of an L on Carmilla’s chest just as she threw another insult.

How could she not kiss her then?

#

Accidents like accidentally sleeping with your ex. Carmilla was being so supportive and Laura’s fingers had itched, the skin on her wrist practically burning for a marker. 

So Laura swept all the books off the desk and grabbed Carmilla instead of the marker. 

#

The second time it happened, Carmilla got Laura’s shirt off before she could notice what was happening. The only giveaway was the pause in Carmilla’s hands and the sudden hitch in her throat. When Laura opened her eyes, Carmilla was hovering over her as she pinned Laura to the desk and just stared down at Laura’s chest

At the full shadow Carmilla’s name there. 

She went to touch it but then stopped, her fingers curling into fists before she reached back and pulled off her own shirt. Laura had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out at the sight. 

LAURA.

Five shadow letters. All staring back at her. Then Carmilla pressed her chest to Laura’s and she was caught up in the distraction all over again. 

#

She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter. The choice was still hers and ink still meant nothing. Did nothing. Helped nothing. Her itching fingers did no good.

She wasn’t in love with Carmilla. 

When she found herself fiddling with the red marker, she shoved it away like it was poison. The next chance she got, she found Carmilla and defined their relationship. Not girlfriends. Not in love. Just light and frothy. 

She straddled Carmilla, pulling her into a deep kiss to quell the itch in her hands with the soft touch of Carmilla’s hair.

When Laf appeared in the basement with Perry slung over their shoulder, Laura couldn’t even blame them. Somewhere along the way, the shadow of Perry’s name on their chest had turned to red ink.

It quickly became the Dean’s favourite point of mockery once she woke up. 

Her second favourite was talking about Laura’s ink.

#

Laura fiddled with her own red marker, tapping it against the space in the middle of her chest where she’d written Carmilla’s name to try and convince herself that her wrist wasn’t burning and that Carmilla belonged in a place that was ‘light and frothy and have a little fun with each other.’ It travelled up, tapping over the hidden shadow letters of Carmilla’s name that refused to disappear, stranding strong like 8 tiny soldiers.

She just stared at the Dean, her words about the pointlessness of ink running through Laura’s mind.

“You shouldn’t listen to her,” Carmilla appeared from the back of the room and sat down beside her, “All she says is lies.”

“Except she doesn’t,” Laura said, “Everything she said was true. I couldn’t save anyone using ink and everything bad that happened is my fault. Sure she’s all twisted but she isn’t wrong.”

“Yes she is.” Carmilla said, and when she turned Laura saw that her name was once again written in the space between Carmilla’s collarbones. Giving her a small smile, Carmilla said, “You spent time with my mother, I figured you need it.”

“Is that-” Laura started.

“Sharpie,” Carmilla said, “I don’t have any of the real stuff left.”

Laura frowned, trying to think, “No. You still had some left after the last time. I remember. It still sloshed in the marker when you put it in your pocket.”

“Used it up,” Carmilla said. When Laura gave her a look, she mumbled, “It’s hard to get out of Silas and you were about to leave.”

Her fingers itched like crazy and grabbing at her wrist didn’t seem to do anything to help.

“Anyway,” Carmilla continued, “My point is, that if nothing in this big world means anything then the only thing that means is something is what we write. You know, I mean, look at me. I used to use hopelessness as an excuse for all of the awful things that I did. I told myself there was no point in giving parts of myself away to anyone when I didn’t have any real ink to give anyway.”

She paused, looking right at Laura, “Until this prissy little overachiever that I was totally planning on handing over to my mother for her ink, unravelled all of my plans. Because she thought that we all deserved better. That we all deserved a piece of each other. Whatever we could give. Because we all deserved to know that someone cared about us. Ink or just a silly smear of sharpie. We all deserved it. Even me.”

Laura leaned forward just a little her hand pressing against her chest as the only thing in her mind was the word Carmilla. Written on her skin and sitting right in front of her. Setting her on fire with a warmth that radiated out from her core every time she looked at her sharpied name on Carmilla’s skin. 

“And yeah,” Carmilla continued, “You are flawed. And struggling and uncertain but it is so beautiful, the way you try.”

Her fingers itched and her chest was warm and Laura couldn’t get any words to come out of her mouth. They were stuck between her collarbones in the soft space where Carmilla wrote her name like she was proud to wear it. Like she believed that it meant something. 

Like the ink mattered. 

And it did. It did. Who was she kidding, of course the ink mattered. 

“To hell with light and casual,” Laura said. Then she leaned in, grabbing the back of Carmilla’s head and letting out everything trapped in her chest and her throat through her lips. She kissed Carmilla until Carmilla’s hands wrapped around her back, pulling her closer so that there was no space between them. Chest to chest as the shadow words over Laura’s heart pressed tight to Carmilla’s body. 

She broke back to breath and then kissed Carmilla twice more. 

Pulling back just enough speak, she kept one hand on Carmilla’s cheek to keep her close while the other moved down to her pocket. She kept her forehead pressed to Carmilla, noses brushing every time she shook her head.

The truth she’d been working so hard to ignore rolling through her. 

“I don’t want to be light and casual with you.” Laura said, pulling back to look at Carmilla properly. “I don’t want to pretend that what I feel about you is some frothy thing that doesn’t matter because it is like the axis that my world turns on.”

She ran her thumb over Carmilla’s cheek, watching as Carmilla just looked at her with something like hope in her eyes, “And yeah,” Laura continued, “we could talk ourselves out of it because this is scary and the world’s about to end if your mother gets her way. But if it is then I want us to have something good to hold onto.”

Her other hand gently grasped the red marker in her pocket, holding it between them where Carmilla could see. She gave Carmilla a moment as her eyes widened and her hand came down to grasp around Laura’s hand on the marker. 

“I love you,” Laura whispered, “why shouldn’t that be something good?”

And Carmilla smiled. Small but somehow radiating happiness. 

Her fingers played with Laura’s, “Mine is dried up,” she whispered, “I can’t give you-”

“I don’t care,” Laura cut her off, bringing both of her hands around Carmilla’s to hold the marker tighter, pushing it into Carmilla’s fist. “I choose you. I don’t care if all you can give me is shadows and sharpie markers. That’s enough. That’s more than enough.”

Trembling, Laura pushed back the edges of her shirt to expose the shadow of Carmilla’s name on her chest. Then she popped the lid of the red marker for the first time. She pressed it into Carmilla’s hand and then wrapped her own around them both. 

The ink was hot on Laura’s skin, drying immediately as it perfectly traced the shadow below it. Permanent. 

They wrote the name together. 

Then as Laura capped the empty marker, Carmilla kissed her with damp lips; Carmilla held up the sharpie. 

Laura smiled and took it, Carmilla’s hand wrapping around her own as they traced the shadow of Laura’s name across Carmilla’s chest. “I’ll write it every day,” Carmilla said, kissing the promise against her skin and the red ink on it. 

And so they chose.

Soulmates.

#

When the Dean broke free of her circle, Laura fought her with Carmilla’s name still written on her chest. As the Dean got her in a magical chokehold, Laura thought that she caught the faintest flutter of red ink on the Dean’s chest. 

When she punched the Dean in the face and tried to make a break for it, she thought she saw it again. 

When the Dean lunged at her, intent to kill, Laura’s eyes were closed and her hand was pressed to her own chest so the black ink Carmilla on her wrist could touch the red ink Carmilla above her heart. 

She didn’t die. 

Laura was poofed across universes as the library concocted a plan to try and get the last ingredient they needed to trap the Dean. The heart of the man she’d once killed to save Carmilla’s life. She hadn’t expected to find Carmilla in the twisted alternate universe. 

Especially one who pulled back the collar of her shirt to reveal Laura’s name carved into her chest, made fresh every morning so that the blood rose to the surface and turned the scars red. A penance and a promise. 

When Laura poofed back to her own world, even though she never got the heart she came for, it was a relief to find her Carmilla with sharpie across her chest. She never explained but she cried when Carmilla took her by the hand to trace another line of sharpie over the shadows. Carmilla just held her and let Laura cry into her hair as Laura made her promise that they’d never become that girl. 

That sharpie was always enough. 

The promise was in the action itself, not the colour or the blood or the ink. Just the action.

#

Her marker was nearly full again, fixing of its stagnation, when she pulled the black marker out on their last night before they had to go try and stop Carmilla’s mother from ending the world. One girl and one vampire against a literally goddess hell bent on opening the gates to hell. 

She wrote Carmilla’s name first, nestling it in its proper place between the veins of her wrist before running a finger along the red word on her chest. Then she moved on, adding all the other names of their friends across her body before capping the marker and putting it back in her pocket.

Never waste your ink, her father always said. 

No such thing as wastefulness at the end of the world. She looked over at Carmilla and smiled. Her name poked out from Carmilla’s shirt and obviously written across the space between Carmilla’s collarbones. She knew she’d find Carmilla’s family on her ribs and Elle on her spine. New was the small list of friends on her forearm. 

Then Carmilla extended her hand and swirled Laura into a dance, their waltz an echo of the one before it. Laura’s skin was warm as Carmilla softly held her hand and twirled her around before bringing her in closer. Face to face and chest to chest. 

From that distance, Laura leaned down and pressed a kiss to her name between Carmilla’s collarbones. Then one to the edge of a word written across her skin. Over her heart. 

In that moment, they had seemed as eternal as Carmilla was and as permanent as red ink.

Laura had never expected to have her heart literally ripped from her chest. 

Three hours later in front of the door to hell, Carmilla gripped her tight as Laura’s knees buckled over her Dad’s name. She fell to the ground, chest gasping for air as the Dean stood over them with Laura’s heart in her hand. 

“Laura!” Carmilla screamed, “Laura! No!”

She could feel Carmilla’s arms around her, clutching at anything she could get her hands on as she pressed her cheek to Laura’s head. Her chest seized, bubbling up and down with air that had nowhere to put its oxygen. Every swallow a gasp to try and pull something into her chest. 

“It -It -It wasn’t -supposed to go- - like like this,” Laura choked out. 

Carmilla rocked her gently even as her other hand went frantically to her marker, throwing the lid anywhere to try and use what little ink was left. 

She barely got a “La” written across her wrist before the ink dried up. Then she pulled Laura closer and kissed her forehead. 

Laura just stared at the Dean, watching as held Laura’s heart in her hand and turned to the gate. Her robes moved as she spun and Laura again caught that flash of red on the Dean’s chest. She choked out the words, “You - you- have a soulmate?”

“He is trapped, dear girl,” The Dean said, arranging the items for her spell, “In the underworld and, since I was trapped in a human body, they stole my ink and I cannot use it to write myself or him free. If I cannot set him free then I will open the gate and walk to him. Let the world burn. I do not care.”

Laura’s mind raced even as Carmilla pulled her closer. Taking another shaky breath, her body still heaving with every movement she reached into her pocket and grabbed her marker, her arm shook as she held it out, “Here.”

Both the Dean and Carmilla stared at her and Laura nearly fell over, barely able to stay on her knees as her chest shook and pain coursed through her body.

“You- you- you need,” She forced herself to spit out the words between gasps, “more ink- ink right?” She held it again, “here. You lost -lost all of yours. Nobody - nobody wrote your name anymore” Her breath came into little hitches but her name on the space between Carmilla’s collarbones was enough to keep her going, tears in her eyes. “Maybe it’s not too late to give you back what they took.”

She felt Carmilla move to hold her back so Laura flung herself forward with the little strength she had left. She landed on top of the Dean and used the momentum to crack open the marker. Her veins went cold as the ink poured into the Dean’s hands, “freely - freely - freely given.” she gasped. 

Never waste your ink, her dad always said.

“Not a waste,” she mumbled, “Never a waste. Not if they need it.”

There was an explosion and the next thing she knew, she was back in Carmilla’s arms. Her veins were still cold, the ice ripping through her skin as though she could feel the very place where the crack in her marker was. “It worked?” she said, “Cool beans.”

She felt Carmilla shake her head and smile against Laura’s face, even as she felt Carmilla’s tears on her skin, “you were supposed to stay safe,” Carmilla said into her face, “You were supposed to go back to your nice little life, Laura.”

She would have smiled if she had the air and strength to manage it, “But-but-but then I -I -I wouldn’t have been me.” Her chin bobbed as she tried to gulp down more air. 

Carmilla was crying in her ear, Laura could hear the hitch in her voice even over her own gasping inhales. Her hand was warm on Laura’s forehead as she tucked Laura into the space in her neck where Laura’s name lived in sharpie. 

“Please. Please don’t leave me.” Carmilla begged and Laura wanted to reach out to her. To run her fingers over the name on Carmilla’s chest. “Please. Not after this.”

Wheezing, Laura forced herself to pull out the words, “I don’t - I don’t - want to go.”

The cold was creeping in faster now, the last drip of ink falling from the broken tube. 

So Laura forced herself to look up, look at Carmilla as she pushed her eyelids open for one last look at the girl with Laura’s name on her skin. She had to know that Laura didn’t want to be another in the long line who left her. “There’s still so- much- much- I want to- do- do- Like. Like. Like.”

The words died in her throat, settling in the soft spot between her collarbones as the last flicker of ink fell.

#

Carmilla felt Laura’s body go cold in her arms as the words stopped, Laura’s unfinished sentence hanging in the air. She closed her eyes against the tears that had already fallen and clutched Laura just a little tighter. “No.” was all she could say.

Everything was drowned out by the shaky sobs leaking from her throat as they tore past the place where she put Laura’s name. The name of a girl who couldn’t be saved. 

Carmilla didn’t even have the ink to try. 

Slowly, she lowered Laura to her lap and moved her away from the sharpie on Carmilla’s neck that could offer Laura nothing. Her cries came in tiny gasps, as though there was a pause between each one that she hoped Laura could fill but nothing ever came. Bending over, she softly kissed Laura one last time. 

The angle letting Carmilla catching the red ink of her own name on Laura’s chest. 

Soulmate. 

Laura chose her. 

Pressing her face to the ink, Carmilla let herself sob. 

#

With her mother returned to her goddess form, Carmilla begged her to bring Laura back. The smallest flicker of hope that only fell apart all over again when the only answer she got was ‘a sacrifice undone is a sacrifice negated.’ There would be no help from her so called mother. 

She practically snarled at the ceiling, a laugh of unsurprised disappointment on her lips as she told her mother to just go. To just leave her. Leave her with the girl in her arms. 

But her mother couldn’t simply just leave.

The first thing Carmilla felt was warmth ripping across her chest, the skin splitting open and reknitting itself together in a set of lines and letters that were familiar even as they tore across her skin. Breathing heavy for the first time, she tore back her collar to reveal the scar of her name across her chest. An exact copy of the word as it was written on Laura.

CARMILLA.

Except Carmilla’s heart was beating where Laura’s was still. 

The vampire nature that had kept the red ink from working suddenly gone and Carmilla slammed her hand against her chest, wanting to rip it away but not daring to ruin anything that Laura had made. Her handwriting so different from Carmilla’s own as it filled in the gaps between the black lettered LAURA on her own chest. 

“YOU THINK I WANT TO BE HUMAN NOW?” she roared at the sky. At the goddess who was no longer there to hear her cries. “YOU THINK I WANT TO BE HUMAN WITHOUT HER?” She waited, eyes searching the sky as her heart beat for the first time in centuries. She waited. 

And waited. 

And when no response came broken words tore from her throat, “Take it back,” she begged, “please. Take it back.” Her hand softly caressed Laura’s neck as though she could somehow grant wishes. The space just behind her ear where Carmilla had pressed a hundred different kisses. She was surprised to find ink there, the tiniest ‘mom’ hidden in the softness. 

Then it hit Carmilla. 

Her hand scrambled for her pocket and tore it open as she ripped the markers out. Her eyes went wide as she looked at them both. 

Full of ink. 

The black one slammed against her wrist as she finished Laura’s name. Then her eyes darted around the room, trying to find laura’s marker. Her heart dropped as she watched a drop of black roll it’s way down the tube and fall out of the crack. 

She threw the red one across the room as she buried her head in her hands. 

There was no way to refill Laura with the crack there. There was nothing she could do. Ignoring Laf and Perry, she walked over to the person in the room who knew her best. Her sister. The word ‘Mattie’ living between her ribs even though Mattie now worked for a death goddess who had been the cause of all of this.

“You knew,” Carmilla accused her, “You knew that Mother wanted her heart. You and your boss. You knew she would die.”

“Maybe,” Mattie allowed. “Regardless, she made the sacrifice all on her own. She would want you to enjoy your new life.”

Carmilla’s eyes went wide, “My new life,” she said, “My new life. That’s it. I have something your death goddess wants.” She held up the marker, full of black soul ink. “My life.”

So Carmilla made a wager with a death goddess, “My life for hers.”

Mattie shook her head, “You Know that a sacrifice undone is a sacrifice negated. The gods cannot interfere.”

Carmilla fought the urge to rip out her spine, “Fine.” She thought fast, “Then my life against you fixing Laura’s marker. How about that, huh? That wouldn’t bring her back to life all on its own.”

“You would have to fill her all of the way,” Mattie said, “that would take up all of your ink.”

“I don’t care. Anything to get her back. I’ll kill a god if I have to,” Carmilla said, “Do we have a deal?”

The deal was struck. The wager was made. A riddle was given.

Carmilla won.

#

The first thing she did was retrieve her red marker then, clutching all four markers to her chest, Carmilla walked to Laura. She put Laura’s empty markers down on her chest, turning them so that she could see the window. Carmilla started with her empty wrist, writing Laura’s name in the place on her skin that had born a hundred different sets of shackles. That knew what it meant to be scraped raw and keep going, keep fighting, keep searching for freedom even as metal cut into your wrist with every blow.

Laura’s name went there first. 

She leaned down, kissing the matching spot on Laura’s arm. Then looked at the markers.

As Carmilla watched, the tiniest drop of black formed in the bottom of the tube.

Her smile was thin and grim and determined as she readjusted her grip on the marker and started writing, stopping only to press kisses to Laura’s skin. She wrote Laura’s name down her arms, turning the word sideways to chase the path of her veins and bones up her arm. The blood that pumped alive under her skin. The bone that kept her from falling to pieces. 

She wrote. Carmilla coated the inside of her arms with a dozen tiny Laura’s, the places where she wrapped Laura in her arms during the nights. Evenings that Carmilla chose to spend in bed when she didn’t even need to sleep, just to feel Laura in her arms for a little longer. The way she would snuggle in closer and wrap her arms around Carmilla’s own, pressing them together so that she was surrounded by nothing but Laura. She wrote Laura’s name on her palms where she could cradle Laura’s face when they kissed. She wrote Laura’s name on her fingers, lining the spaces where Laura’s hand fit so perfectly.

Leaving a trail of kisses up Laura’s arm and down the other side, Carmilla switched to writing on her legs. 

She wrote the word ‘laura’ fell along the lines of her muscles, tracing shapes that she could barely remember from anatomy. Muscles kept things moving and her legs were the places she moved most. Walking on them through 300 years to arrive at her place today. Running and jumping and leaping and learning that her legs where what let her feel the wind in her hair. Let her eyes see marvelous things. They were what took her onward and allowed her to leave disaster behind, moving onto whatever came next. 

They took her to Laura. 

She wrote Laura’s name across her knuckles. The places that had spent decades as nothing but a bloody mess when she’d pounded on the lid of the coffin to try and free herself, trying over and over again until her skin wore to the bone. Then trying again as soon as they healed. Hope that one day even a sparrow could chip away a mountain. 

She wrote Laura’s name on her spine, just above the place where Elle’s name sat but this time it was not about being unseen. This time it was about the stretch in her spine when she transformed into a panther. The freedom that came with running on four legs instead of two. It was the place where her tail would attach, snaking back and forth with every move. The place where her growl lived, ready to snarl at all who would oppose her or those she loved. The place where her purr was pulled from, the happy sound that never seemed to come often enough yet somehow was pulled through her human form at Laura’s hand. 

Gently, she kissed Laura there as well. Remembering the small freshman who had written Elle’s name on her behalf with trembling fingers. 

She wrote Laura’s name over her hips, the places where her younger brother had loved to sit as his big sister whirled him through a castle. She wrote Laura’s name on her stomach, the place where butterflies managed to live enough though it was filled with nothing but blood. She wrote Laura’s name on her belly button, a smile dragging to her face as she thought of blowing wet kisses there to make her laugh. She wrote Laura’s name below her ribcage, filling the empty cavities above organs that she’d never needed. 

She wrote Laura’s name on her ribcage, surrounding the lines she wrote her family on with the one piece of family that she might be able to save. Her ribs were the places where fingers tickled her side and where bones snapped most often. The places surrounded lungs that she didn’t need but still doing their job to protect them, letting her feel human for just a moment every time she breathed in and out. 

She wrote Laura’s name over her breasts, remembering the feel of a hundred different Laura kisses on her soft skin. She wrote Laura’s name on her chest, surrounding the sweeping black ink of Laura’s name that they’d written together. The shadow lines still clear underneath. She wrote Laura’s name on her collarbones, the place that held everything together and attached arms to body. The place where Laura liked to curl her fingers as she leaned softly into Carmilla’s side. 

Lastly, she wrote her name on the small gap between them, covering over the sharpie to write soul ink in the place Laura lived most. Not in her wrist where Carmilla had once tried to force her but here. In a place where everyone could see. A place that was soft and squished under her touch but was still firm. The jugular notch, above the throat and the windpipe where the gap in her bone made her most vulnerable. The only thing standing between the outside world and the place where words lived and breath came. The place where laughter came from and tears got clogged. 

Laura. 

To her it was Laura. 

Hands shaking from exhaustion, Carmilla paused in her work. Laura’s marker had never hit the ¾ mark while Carmilla only a little bit left. Not enough. Not yet. Her hands were already so cold, the familiar ice dripping down her spine.

So she set down the black marker, needing to save it.

Then she picked up the red marker. 

The marker made of love and permanency and choices. One shot. Once and done. Carmilla didn’t even have to think about, she’d choose Laura every time. Hands still shaking, Carmilla uncapped the red marker and gently wrapped Laura’s cold fingers around it. She pulled back her shirt and used the palm of her free hand to wipe the sharpie from her skin, using the sweat from her shaking body to get it off. 

Her skin felt clammy as her heart pumped overtime. With the marker so low, Carmilla’s skin was almost white and she could feel exhaustion trying to claim her. To knock her out before she could keep using herself up like this. 

Use her soul up like this. 

She fought it, ignoring the blackness at the corners of her eyes. “Oh no you don’t,” she growled, taking Laura’s hand, “Not today. Not her. I choose her. Tell your death goddess that you don’t get to take me before I’m done. I’ve still got ink left.”

The black receded, the cold slipped back, and Carmilla took a deep breath. Propping Laura up against her, she held Laura’s hand and wrote Laura’s name across her skin. The shadow giving way to a deep heat that poured through her body as she covered all five letters of Laura’s name. Rather than burn, the heat calmed her, filling her with certainty at her actions.

Of course this spot was made for Laura. It was the place where Laura kissed her silvery scar from where the arrow tore across her skin. It was the place where Carmilla rested her head on Laura’s chest to hear her heartbeat a little bit better. The places where the pressed together every time they waltzed. Every time they kissed.

They did this together. 

She let a single hiccup slip out as she watched the scar form across Laura’s chest, appearing under the red ink of Carmilla’s name to mix the two together as the ink in Laura’s black marker leapt up. Nearly there.

She kissed Laura’s new scar. Her own handwriting on Laura’s body.

One thing left.

Putting both red markers aside, Carmilla reached out and slowly grabbed Laura’s heart where her mother had left it resting on the ground, never needed for a spell. Little bits of blood transferred to her hand as Carmilla carefully cradled the precious organ. 

The thing that made Laura live. The place that pumped blood through her body but Laura’s life was so much more than blood. Her heart was the place that set her cheeks on fire when she blushed, the way her pulse jumped when Carmilla moved in too close, the reason she was driven to share little bits of herself. The piece of herself that she’d given to Carmilla, to her friends, to everyone, because she believed that every deserved to know that someone cared about them.

It was the place where Laura cared. 

So Carmilla held Laura’s heart in one hand and her marker in the other. Only enough ink left for one final name. One last Laura.

She bent down and kissed Laura lightly on the lips, breathing her last words across them, “I love you. Please forgive me for this.”

So using the last of her ink, Carmilla wrote LAURA across the heart then she gently pushed it back into Laura’s chest. She fell forwards, resting her head on Laura’s chest and hoping that she’d be able to feel it beat once before she slipped away. The darkness pulling at the corners of her vision.

Then it vanished entirely.

“Not today, Karnstein,” came a voice she’d forgotten was there.

Lifting her head even as she kept clinging to Laura, Carmilla looked over to see Laf and Perry and Kirsch. Their arms were all extended towards her and her name covered every one of them. “Laura gives bits of herself to everyone, you know,” Laf said, “you both should get a happy ending.”

Carmilla hiccuped. 

Then a gasp flew through the air and her hiccup turned into a shaky “oh” as she rocked slightly backwards, head ripping towards Laura. Laura who had just breathed. Laura who was moving.

Laura surged upwards so quickly that Carmilla barely had time to catch her. 

“Like-like,” Laura said already talking even as she gasped for air, “I always wanted to go to Paris. Or London. Or just the world. I always wanted to try-”

Carmilla could have laughed as she tried to gather Laura into her arms. Of course Laura would wake from the dead and already be talking, pulling words past that hollow in her collarbones to pick up exactly where she left off. Instead, she held Laura’s head in her hands and pulled her in to kiss her. 

Uncertain of what else to do as her hands and body flailed for more of her, to confirm that she was here and real and full again. Her hands settled on her face as her mouth moved, desperately trying to kiss Laura despite the smile on her face that threatened to crack her in two. 

Laura’s hand eventually landed on the back of her neck, pulling her closer, and Carmilla could have cried as her palms came around to press against Carmilla’s cheeks.

Needing air for the first time, she was forced to break away and breath softly as Laura took her in. She just stared at her, Carmilla refusing to let go of her as Laura’s eyes swept over her name written a hundred times over on Carmilla’s skin.

“Don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” Laura said, looking at Carmilla with something like awe, “But why aren’t I dead?”

Carmilla laughed, only part of it escaping as a sob of relief. She just looked down at Laura and smiled. 

Then Laura’s fingers started dancing over the words on Carmilla’s skin, still staring up at Carmilla’s face like it was everything. Waiting for an explanation. “There’s one on your heart too,” was all Carmilla gave her. 

Laura’s hand dashed to her own chest as though she could feel what Carmilla had written but then her eyes went wide, “Is this…” she started, “a scar…” Her hand dashed out to Carmilla’s chest and pulled down her shirt. Laura gasped when the red was revealed, no words coming out. Instead, her fingers just traced the red looping letters of her name. 

“You’re human?” Laura whispered. 

Carmilla smiled and swallowed down another set of tears. Just nodding over and over and over again as she sniffed and hoped that it was answer enough. Apparently it was. Wonder flashed over Laura face as her hand pressed tight to Carmilla’s chest and then she was kissing Carmilla all over again. 

Kissing her until the both had to break for air but were unwilling to be separated even an inch, breathing the same air as Laura’s lips continued to touch hers and even nibbled softly at her open mouth.

“I chose you,” Carmilla said. 

Laura brushed her thumb over Carmilla’s chest again, “I chose you too.” She whispered. 

Two girls clinging to each other at the gates of hell, one with her skin covered in the same name a hundred times over while the other bore that same name written over her beating heart. Both with red ink across their chests and scars to match. Little bits of themselves freely given to the girl in their arms. 

Fate gave them the option and they chose. 

Soulmates.

**Author's Note:**

> We find ourselves at the end again. 30 days with 343 pages and more than 119,000 words. If we count when I started writing just over a year and a half ago for this fandom then this is my 73rd Carmilla story and more than 369,000 words. 
> 
> And I still feel so blessed by you. Creampuffs, cupcakes, and readers. 
> 
> I'll make a longer, sappier tumblr post later when I get some sleep and my brain no longer feels it has a couple of moose lazily walking through it. Moose are big. It's not good. But the heart of the matter is that Carmilla and it's creampuffs are written in ink on my fingers. The places where I write words that I never though I could and find stories that I didn't know I had in me. You are written on my jawline as every comment, kudos and [ tumblr stop-ins ](http://ariabauer.tumblr.com/) cracks a smile over my face that I didn't think I'd have that day. You are written on my chest in the places between my ribs and over my heart where I never expected to find a community. You are written on the back of my neck where stories are born even after i gave up on believing anyone ever wanted my writing. 
> 
> You are a group for whom I have taken my ink to write words for time and time again and it has never felt like a waste of my time or my ink or my soul. Thank you. For your support. For you comments and tumblr follows and kudos that mean more than you know. thank you for reading. Just for reading. For looking at these little pieces of me and letting them in.
> 
> Just thank you cupcakes. I hope you liked this one too. 
> 
> survey is now closed. thank you to all who participated. 
> 
> This is the thirtieth story of '30 Days of Cupcake' where I'll be posting a unique Carmilla fanfic every weekday for 30 days. 
> 
> Cupcakes. Stay stupendous. Always and forever. Aria. <3


End file.
